


Photographic Memories

by notaverse



Series: JE Fleet [3]
Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Conspiracy, M/M, Military, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaverse/pseuds/notaverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mere hours away from Earth, the crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN have their leave cut short as Commodore Yamashita sends Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi on a top secret mission to Venus. But when Kame's past as the tactical advisor for the Fahngarlians catches up with him, the planet of love becomes the planet of war...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** JE Fleet III: Photographic Memories ch. 1/8  
>  **Series:** JE Fleet  
>  **Fandom:** KAT-TUN  
>  **Pairing:** Kame x Jin  
>  **Rating:** PG-13? Maybe occasionally bordering on R?  
>  **Genre:** AU, sci-fi, crack   
> **Disclaimer:** Not mine, dammit.

Commodore Yamashita Tomohisa, known to friends, superior officers and a certain good-looking Jovian bartender as 'Yamapi', braced himself for the inevitable momentary disorientation that accompanied the teleport procedure. It wasn't that leaving his bright pink flagship, the Pin, was particularly traumatic - on the contrary, it was something of a relief to get away from Ensign Tegoshi and Lieutenant Masuda, who had (once again) accidentally flooded the bridge with miso soup.

No, it was the arrival at his destination that posed a problem. The Jaguar-class ship KAT-TUN, in addition to being one of the finest crafts in the entire JE Fleet, was also one of the craziest. The crew, most of them former space-pirates, tended to ignore orders, refused to wear uniform, and hoarded unorthodox sidearms like they were going out of fashion. The vessel was heavily-armed, had shield generators to match its firepower, and thanks to a recent engine upgrade could easily outstrip any ship in the Sol System...and beyond.

A fearsome combination, to be sure, and of the two captains, one had previously tried to destroy the human race, and the other was occasionally certifiable.

Luckily, the lunatic of the pair happened to be Yamapi's best friend, Akanishi Jin. Jin was *usually* happy to see him, but Yamapi had a feeling he might not get such a warm reception this time. Not when he was teleporting across to the KAT-TUN to give them a new mission mere days after they'd returned from their last one, and when they were technically beginning a month's leave.

If he was going to be totally honest with himself - which he normally was - he didn't feel too good about it either. Only two days earlier, he'd given the other captain, Kamenashi Kazuya, the good news that his shipboard confinement had been cut short by Earth President Imai Tsubasa, and he was now free to come and go as he pleased. Yamapi had later received a garbled transmission from Jin, saying something about them going to Earth for vacation and that the KAT-TUN would be docked at Tokyo Central Spaceport for the next month.

Unfortunately, it was Yamapi's job to tell them to turn around when they were only hours away from their home planet, delaying their well-earned leave for a week. He wasn't looking forward to it.

The miso-swamped bridge of the Pin disappeared, replaced by the considerably drier bridge of the KAT-TUN, and Yamapi checked out his audience. Most of them opted not to notice him.

Of the command crew, Lieutenant Tanaka Koki, Commander Ueda Tatsuya, Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi and Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke were nowhere to be seen, their usual seats being filled by the trainees who made up a disproportionately large percentage of the JE Fleet. Since the ship was currently stationary alongside the Pin, almost everybody of consequence had disappeared for parts unknown - probably to pack their gear in preparation for disembarkation on Earth.

The two very obvious exceptions were Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi, who were flipping through a holographic travel brochure propped up on the armrest between their seats...as much as a holographic book could be propped up on anything, anyway.

"What do you think, Pi?" Jin began conversationally, as though the commodore had been there all along and hadn't suddenly materialised in the centre of the bridge. "Europe or America? We've decided we're going to spend a week in Japan and then travel around a bit, but we can't decide where to start."

"*You* can't decide," Kame corrected him. "I already suggested Paris."

"I know, I'm just not sure I want to go to Texas."

Kame looked at his partner in disbelief. "I meant Paris, France, Jin. Not the one in Texas."

"Oh." Jin looked crestfallen, but perked up when Kame ruffled his soft, brown curls. "I guess we're going to France, then," he said cheerfully.

Yamapi shuffled his feet awkwardly. He hated to have to do this to his friends, but orders were orders and if he disobeyed, Admiral Takki was never going to speak to him again. He wasn't sure he could live with that.

"France is going to have to wait a little while," he said, displaying the data disc he held.

The blood drained from Jin's face when he saw it, but Kame got in first. "That's not a 'congratulations on the end of your confinement' present, is it?"

The commodore shook his head. "No, but if it makes you feel any better, I do have something on order for you for the occasion - a Vanderburgh original with a custom finish. It's being flown in from Saturn, I'll have it for you when you get back."

Kame's ecstasy at acquiring a new chair, and one of his favourite brands, at that, didn't last long. He abandoned Jin's hair and stood up, looking grim.

"It doesn't make *me* feel any better," Jin complained. "I don't care what it is, Pi, but we're not doing it."

Yamapi sighed. "At least hear me out," he pleaded.

Jin held his ground. "I don't care if it's an order from President Tsubasa himself - we're on leave!"

"Lucky guess," Yamapi said, a touch more surly than before. The trainees were gathering on the fringes of the room and placing bets on the outcome, and he had a horrible feeling that the smart money wasn't on him. He was, after all, outnumbered. "Just listen to me before you throw a fit. And, Jin, if you interrupt me even once, I'm going to tie you up and gag you."

Kame scowled and flipped his hair. "No one gets to do that but me!"

Jin turned bright red and looked at the floor. "I said I didn't want to try that again," he muttered.

Whispers began to rustle round the room as the trainees speculated on the nature of the relationship between their captains. More money exchanged hands, and Yamapi wondered briefly how he could get in on the action. Underage gambling was alive and well on the KAT-TUN, unlike the Pin, where the big problem was underage drinking and the much put-upon Captain Kato Shigeaki had to resort to all sorts of interesting stress relief mechanisms to help him deal with the hassle.

"I really didn't want to know that, by the way. You guys are still going to get your leave, all right? You'll just be delayed a week. President Tsubasa needs you to take a detour to Venus."

Jin seemed to be about to open his mouth and protest, but Yamapi's threat, or possibly Kame's retort, made him reconsider. He slumped back down in his padded leather chair and started flipping through the travel brochure again, pointedly ignoring his best friend and commanding officer.

Kame's interest was piqued, however. "Venus? What could they possibly want us to do on Venus? It's the planet of love, not war!"

"Exactly." Yamapi favoured Kame with a lazy smile, happy that at least someone was paying attention to him. "And who better to send on a secret mission to the planet of love than a couple of guys who can't keep their hands off each other? Usually," he amended, since the two captains were now at greater than arm's length.

Kame rolled his eyes. "Secret mission?" he repeated. "Don't tell me we've been seconded to Special Ops."

The commodore was aghast at the very idea. "Definitely not," he said firmly. "They wouldn't last five minutes with you guys. This is a private assignment for just the two of you."

"This isn't exactly private, Pi."

Jin had a point. The commodore attempted to persuade the captains to vacate to more suitable premises, but Jin refused to budge, and promising Trainee Yabu Kota was forced to round up his fellow junior crewmembers and usher them off the bridge.

"Happy now?" Yamapi asked once the three of them were left alone. "It's really immature of you to do things like that."

"Yeah, it is," Kame agreed, "but you're the one sticking out his tongue. You're as bad as each other."

Yamapi glared at him. "I didn't notice you leaping in with the common sense."

Kame smirked and sat back down, this time settling himself on Jin's lap. Yamapi found this slightly disconcerting since the holographic travel brochure was still open on the older captain's legs, and Kame appeared to be sitting in a map of North America.

Jin obviously found it unnerving as well, because he immediately deactivated the small projector embedded in his chair arm. Yamapi took advantage of Kame's choice of resting place to plant himself in the other power seat. If he was going to be the unwilling bearer of bad news, he wanted to sit down.

"It's a private assignment," he continued, "because it's a secret." He put his index finger to his lips and made an exaggerated shushing sound.

"This hasn't got anything to do with a surprise birthday present for Admiral Takki, has it?" Jin asked, his voice laced with suspicion. "Because if this is your way of getting me to go into all those weird shops so you don't have to, you can forget it."

"I didn't realise they were going to try give you a tattoo! And no, I don't want you to shop, though it might help your cover."

"Our cover as what?" Kame wanted to know.

Yamapi grinned. "If you look at it this way, it's not really a cover. It's real life." From the way Jin's legs were starting to kick, almost unseating Kame, he was getting bored, so the commodore picked up the pace. "You guys have been to Eros City, right?"

Kame spoke for both of them. "Once, back when it was still open all year round, but we only got as far as the spaceport. There was this trader who-" he choked off abruptly as Jin hit him in the back to remind him that perhaps it wasn't such a fabulous idea to be talking about some of their less legitimate exploits in front of a superior officer, even one who used to work on the other side of the law himself. "Just once," he finished, rubbing his back.

"Then I guess you won't have to fake being a pair of tourist lovebirds," the commodore said brightly.

Jin wrapped his arms around Kame's waist and snuggled against his shoulder. "No fake," he agreed in all solemnity.

Yamapi thought he felt the beginnings of a cavity, brought on by all the sugar in the room. He and Jin had been lovers a long time ago, back when they were still living on Earth, and while the passion had been shortlived the love remained. He didn't begrudge Kame and Jin their happiness...but there were times when he longed for that sort of relationship himself. "Like I said, it's not really a cover. You'll be there till Sunday - unless you find it early, in which case you can leave as soon as you contact me."

"Find what?" Kame tried to sound impatient, but Jin's affectionate nuzzling got in the way.

"I forgot to show you?" Yamapi was puzzled, until he realised he was still holding the disc. He slotted it into Kame's personal datapad - current display: a disturbing picture of Jin posing in a leopard-print swimsuit - and clicked till he found the image he wanted. "Here. This is what we want you to retrieve."

The KAT-TUN captains peered dubiously at the datapad. "It's a nice picture," Jin said at last.

"It is," Kame agreed, "but why do you need us to find a framed photograph of Admiral Takki and President Tsubasa at the beach?"

"It's been stolen from President Tsubasa's office," the commodore informed them.

Jin was clearly bewildered. "And that's a bad thing, but why get the military involved? Isn't that overkill?"

"Not when the photograph has the activation codes for the inner planet HQ self-destructs."

The United Solar Navy, the largest military force in the Sol System, was made up of men and women from everywhere from Mercury to Pluto, not to mention the odd immigrant from other systems. Earth, as the most populous planet and the ruling seat of the Sol System, provided a good portion of the manpower in the form of the JE Fleet, which was presided over by Admiral Takizawa Hideaki, long-time partner of (and lately married to) Earth President Imai Tsubasa.

The Presidential Suite was at JE Fleet HQ in Tokyo, Japan, but there were USN bases of varying sizes all over the system. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars all had USN Headquarters of their own...and to guard against immovable alien invasion, incurable disease or unavoidable disaster, they were all equipped with a self-destruct system. Only the president had the activation codes.

"They're part of the image," Yamapi explained. "You swipe a scanner over the relevant section - for example, that surfboard is for Mercury - and that kickstarts the countdown. It was supposed to be better than keeping it in a safe because the president's got pictures of them all over his office and they figured no one would pay special attention to this one."

"Idiots," Kame muttered under his breath.

"Isn't that a bit dangerous?" Jin asked. "What if someone scanned it by accident?"

"It only works when the glass is removed and the exposed picture is held under UV light. If anyone scans it and blows up four very large buildings, they're doing it on purpose."

Jin lolled back against his headrest. "That's not comforting at all, Pi."

"It's not supposed to be. The picture was stolen two days ago but because the security system was disabled, it took us that long to track down the thief. A woman on the cleaning staff disappeared at the same time - didn't show up for her shift, no one could get hold of her and when they checked, her apartment had been cleaned out and abandoned. Her details are on this disc. She was spotted at Tokyo Central Spaceport, travelling under a different name on a shuttle bound for Eros City."

"So?" Jin said with a shrug. "No one gets in there."

Kame leaned back to catch his partner's eye. "Think what time of year it is, Jin."

"Oh yeah..."

Ordinarily, settlements on Venus welcomed travellers with open arms. Once, Eros City had been of that number, flowing freely with tourists and natives alike, all of whom were keen to love and be loved on the shores of Lake Aphrodite. But three years ago, an unassuming, innocent-seeming tour group had embarked on a killing spree of horrific proportions, gunning down couples in the lush green parks, filling hot tubs with acid, even sabotaging the small, bright pink trains that ran round the city.

Four months of terror made the tourist industry take a nosedive, and even the locals were afraid to go outdoors. The killers never made any demands, nor bragged about their actions. No reason was ever given for the brutal slaughter of almost two thousand people.

After one spectacular train crash, the killing stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and speculation ran rife that those responsible had been onboard at the time. Slowly, things began to settle down, and life, which had been on hold for four months, resumed in Eros City.

But not quite the same as it used to be. With good reason, the city council was afraid, and without knowing what had prompted the murders, the councillors were terrified that it could all happen again one day.

So they closed the gates, put bars on the windows and figuratively buried their heads in the sand. Eros City was closed to travellers, and no one was allowed entry without a special permit. Goods came and went on unmanned trains, and even these were scanned at the point of entry to ensure that no unauthorised personnel slipped through the security net.

There was one exception, however. Every year, for the week containing Valentine's Day, Eros City was open to the public once more. Sort of. Security was still tight, and visitors had to pass an endless round of checks before they were allowed to set one foot outside the spaceport, but once they were cleared, they were able to board the train that took them inside the city itself. No ships could land at Eros City anymore - the closest spaceport was three hours by rail.

Visitors could arrive at any point during the week - and indeed, the checks took so long, on occasion, that it was preferred that the times be staggered - but with the exception of genuine emergencies (loss of life or limb only, please) no one was allowed out until the Sunday of that week, at which point all hell broke loose at the station. Everyone was packed onto the trains and checked back out again, sent off to the spaceport to board their respective ships or catch a shuttle.

"So we could get in," Jin said sullenly. "We'd be unarmed, without backup and even if we found the stupid photo we still couldn't get out until Sunday. And it's not our job, Pi!"

That last part, Yamapi couldn't dispute. "I know and I'm sorry, but do you have any idea what would happen if the news got out about the theft? I had to ask people I could trust, and," he turned on the charm and hoped like hell that his best friend was still susceptible, "you're the person I trust the most in the universe, Jin."

Kame cocked his head. "What about me?"

Yamapi was pretty sure Kame wasn't going to try to destroy the human race again, but that wasn't exactly the most convincing reason to trust him. "Uh...well...Jin tells you everything anyway, so..."

Kame nodded, and if his teeth were clenched a little tighter than they needed to be, no one noticed.

"Besides," Yamapi continued, "you'd stick out like Captain Nagase at a hen night if you tried to walk round Eros City by yourself. Only couples ever go there - so our thief probably has an accomplice. They won't be able to get out before Sunday - but you will. Once you have the picture, go to the station. That's the only place in the city now where you can make contact outside the walls. Call me on my private channel - I'll be docked at the spaceport - and I'll send a team to collect you."

"That's great," Jin drawled, "but what about us being unarmed and alone?"

"We're working on the unarmed part."

"And the alone part?"

Yamapi shook his head. "Sorry. No one can even know there's anything wrong, and if anyone marks you as military people are going to start asking questions. Eros City likes its security to be homegrown, and a couple of JE Fleet captains would attract all kinds of attention. The fewer people involved, the less chance of a leak.

"That's why you can't go in as yourselves. I assume you still have some working fake IDs that'll hold up under serious scrutiny?"

Jin snorted. "Obviously. It's not like Eros City really wants to let in a couple of ex-space pirates, either."

Yamapi was relieved that Jin at least sounded interested. There was a very major downside to being your best friend's commanding officer, in that trying to order him to do anything was an impossible mission in itself and he could usually wrap you round his little finger. He didn't want to have to order Jin to go, because the damage it would do to their friendship...

Kame seemed more than faintly interested. "Not to sound paranoid, but I'm not going in without a weapon."

"I said we were working on it. Arashi have been experimenting with cloaking technologies lately, trying to modify the equipment used on ships to come up with a personal shielding device."

"Figures that Nino would want to make himself invisible," Jin muttered under his breath.

"They haven't succeeded in building anything portable yet, which means they can't make anything invisible to the naked eye. However," Yamapi paused for dramatic effect, "they did come up with a little something to keep your guns off the scanners. Something to do with frequencies, I don't know. I fell asleep during the explanation."

Jin and Kame both owned heavily-customised blasters with a gene-locked trigger, provided specially for them by Arashi (Agency of Really Awesome Smart and Handsome Individuals) - military intelligence, disguised as a talent agency. MatsuJun, their always-fashionable weapons designer, had a knack for producing gadgets as dangerous as they were stylish.

Kame grasped the idea before Jin did. "Our blasters will be visible, but if we carry them concealed, the scanners won't pick them up?"

"Right!"

"So we can't shoot anyone without blowing our cover, then?"

"Right! Um..."

That was enough for Jin. "If they can get that far, then let Arashi do it! The Ohmiya team's perfect for this."

"The entire agency is busy right now," Yamapi said.

"What, all of them? Just tell them to put each other down for a minute and-"

"It's not like that," Yamapi protested. "They're being audited."

The two captains winced in unison.

"By civilian auditors," he added for emphasis.

They winced again. Auditing a military intelligence organisation by the standards of the talent agency they appeared to be...clearly, Arashi were going to have their hands full for a while.

"I suppose if we actually get to the point where we need to use a weapon, it won't be that important to keep our covers," Kame speculated.

"No, because the local security will shoot us on sight and only discover our identities afterwards."

"You don't have to be so negative about it, Jin."

Jin tightened his arms round Kame's waist. "Don't tell me you're considering doing this?"

Through an ingenious series of wriggles and an elbow or two applied in the right place, Kame freed himself from his partner's possessive embrace and slid off his lap to face him. "And why not? Jin, I haven't set foot on a planet for over two years, if you count the time I spent with the Fahgarlians - hell, I haven't even been off this ship in fifteen months except when I was rescuing you from that monstrous computer, and you can't count that as downtime. What's wrong with spending a week on Venus? We'll go to Earth afterwards."

"I don't like it," Jin said unhappily. "This is supposed to be our vacation and you want to work through it."

"You can have another week on the end to make up for it," Yamapi said. He could afford to be generous if it helped convince them to go.

"That's not the point, Pi! By tomorrow we were supposed to be relaxing together on Earth, not checking ourselves into some hotel on Venus looking for terrorists!"

"Jin-"

"We're not doing it and you can't make us!"

"Yes, he can," Kame pointed out. "He's our commanding officer."

"Maybe it's time for another change of career," Jin shot as he stormed out the door.

Yamapi shook his head wearily and wondered if he could possibly blackmail Jin into compliance using hidden video footage of him in a nurse's outfit.

Kame glowered at the bridge door. "We'll be in Jin's quarters. Give me one hour, then come find us."

Before Yamapi could reply, the other KAT-TUN captain had vanished, leaving him all alone. The trainees flooded back in seconds later, and Yamapi settled down to play a few hands of poker with them while he waited for Kame's hour to pass.

 **_Forty-five minutes later..._ **

To get Jin to agree to do something he didn't want to do, gentle coaxing worked much better than threats. Kame knew this well.

Which was why he was currently lying on his back in Jin's bed, absently stroking Jin's curls where they rested on his bare stomach. Content and sated, his argument with Yamapi all but forgotten, the elder of the two captains was happily sprawled underneath the top sheet, using Kame as a pillow.

Kame judged the time was right to bring up the subject of their new mission - now, when Jin was in no condition to argue. "I know it's not going to be easy, Jin, but it's no worse than any of the other odd tasks you've been asked to do. You're not afraid of a little risk, are you? Not the man who went alone to an alien warship to find me, or who teleported to a psychotic space station by himself to keep his crew out of danger?"

Jin's shoulders tensed. "It wasn't that I wasn't scared then," he said quietly. "But I couldn't *not* go. And that was on my own terms. This won't be. And...I don't want you to go."

"Why not?" Kame couldn't figure it out. "Worried I've forgotten how to handle myself on a planet?"

"Of course not. But you've just saved the lives of an awful lot of people, including me, and now you can go wherever you want, and...we're supposed to be, you know, doing things like walking hand-in-hand in the park and stuff, not going on a hunt for the most dangerous photograph in the universe."

"Sounds like you don't even want me in the military with you," Kame teased.

Jin pulled away from Kame's caresses and sat up so he could look his partner straight in the eye. "Kame, I know you. Your mimimum operating level is one hundred per cent, and before long you're giving up your holidays and going without sleep because you're too busy throwing yourself into work. At least when we weren't legally employed it wasn't so bad, but something like this..."

"You're worried I'll overwork myself?"

Jin nodded. "I don't want you to go somewhere I can't follow. I don't want our lives to be an endless round of bringing each other back to sanity for whatever reason."

Kame reached up to cup Jin's face with his hands and gave him a soft, chaste kiss on the lips. "I don't have plans for either of us to go insane any time soon."

"How about plans for us both getting killed? Because it seems to me that's the most likely scenario here, and I can't understand why you're all enthusiastic about it now when you were against it too."

Kame sighed, guiding Jin back down to his resting place so he didn't have to hide the guilt on his features. "Because I don't know if I'm ready to go back to Earth, Jin."

There was an awkward silence while Jin cursed himself mentally for managing to be understanding and sympathetic on completely the wrong issue.

Kame misinterpreted the silence as confusion - ordinarily, he'd have been right - and resumed his stroking of Jin's hair, threading the soft brown strands tenderly through his fingers. It wasn't like petting the daschund he'd had as a child back on Earth; touching Jin like this served to remind him just how beautiful his partner was.

Jin broke the quiet first, his voice hesitant. "Because you tried to destroy it?"

"Yeah." Kame licked his lips, which were drying out fast. It felt like all the moisture in the air had been stripped by the filters, and none of it had been cycled back in. "I was going the scenic route, but yeah, I was going to take Earth. And by that point, I was going to be the only living human being in the Sol System."

Jokes on the subject usually fell flat, but Jin felt it was his duty to attempt to lighten the atmosphere. "So compared to you, whoever took the photograph is an underachiever, right? They only wanted to blow up four buildings."

Kame jerked sharply, tugging at Jin's hair, though he only realised what he'd done when he heard the resulting whine. "Sorry. Reflex."

"It's okay."

Jin was well aware how raw Kame's nerves still were when it came to talking about his attempt to destroy the human race. It was hardly fit topic for friendly conversation, after all, and even now, Kame disliked looking from the viewscreen at the planets he'd once tried to wipe out. He might claim to be fine with going planet-side again, but he hadn't spent time with anyone outside the military since his rescue from the Fahngarlians and privately, Jin wasn't at all sure how Kame would deal with having his freedom restored to him.

Of course, he'd been counting on finding out for sure from the comfort of Tokyo, not the unfamiliar territory of Eros City.

"Four very large, important buildings, Jin. Somebody's trying to do some real damage to the Sol System's defenses. Isn't it worth taking a few risks to stop them?"

"If they know who the woman is, why don't they just send the Eros City security to search for her?" Jin grumbled. "The city's not *that* big. They can just make up a charge, there's no need to mention the photo."

Kame pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Yamapi might not have thought about that, but President Tsubasa would've. There must be another reason for sending us in."

"Because everyone else did the smart thing and refused to go?"

"I believe Yamapi when he says this is a secret. But don't you want to know what this is really about?"

Jin was lying at the wrong angle to see Kame, but judging by his voice there was no mistaking it: the mission had piqued Kame's interest. That meant they were going.

Less than a minute after Jin grudgingly admitted his defeat - he couldn't stand losing, even to Kame - Yamapi appeared in the doorway, optimism written all over his face.

Jin promptly scrambled to cover Kame with the sheet, accidentally revealing more of himself than he'd shown Yamapi in a good ten years, and yelled at his best friend to stop standing in the doorway so the doors could slide shut again. (It was unfortunate that the print locks on all fleet ships responded automatically to the hands of anyone ranked Commodore or higher, in addition to any authorised crew members.)

Yamapi grinned. He didn't deny that he enjoyed the view - particularly when Kame completely ignored Jin's efforts to preserve his modesty, stood up and started dressing, leaving his red-faced partner tangled in the sheets.

"I spent half a year living with an entire fleet of women," Kame reminded them as he threw on a light grey tanktop. "There's nothing you can possibly do to embarrass me now."

Jin groaned and snatched up his oversized plaid robe, making sure it was securely belted before he ventured to stand up. "You could have called, Pi! We might've been in the middle of something!"

"Kame told me to come by in an hour, and since I assumed he knew what he was talking about, here I am," Yamapi explained. "Did he manage to talk you into it?"

Jin played innocent. "Talk me into what?"

Kame handed him a suitcase. "I did and we're going. Get packing."

Yamapi shot Kame a look of gratitude and privately vowed to order him half a dozen new chairs and silk ties to match. Jin didn't look happy, but he didn't look like he wanted Yamapi dead, either, and that meant things were going to be okay between them. Or so he hoped.

He made arrangements with Kame while Jin was showering, ensuring that both parties had all the information they needed: details of the theft, plans for Eros City, contact frequencies and fake identities. Ensign Uchi teleported across with a package from Arashi - the last mail they'd been able to courier out before the auditors had arrived - and a snack for the commodore, who required feeding at regular intervals.

Finally, everything was set. A new course had been programmed into the autopilot, Kame was up to speed, and Jin...was out of the shower. Yamapi prepared to return to the Pin, which would be following the KAT-TUN to Venus with a day's lag. Before he called his flagship to have them teleport him back, he turned to face his friends.

"You owe us for this, Pi," Jin warned him. "I mean it. If anything happens to Kame I'm going to-"

Kame elbowed his partner in the ribs to make him shut up. "Worry about yourself instead," he advised. "If you go to Eros City looking like that, you're liable to find yourself being hit on by every living creature in sight and I might be too busy on our mission to defend your honour."

Jin's bathrobe, being tied very loosely, was slipping open to his navel and baring most of his shoulders. His hair, freshly released from its towel turban, curled dark, damp and delightful around his neck, letting tiny droplets of water trickle down his exposed skin. "I'll defend my own honour, thanks. Not that I can possibly have any left by now..."

Kame's smile reflected years of indulgence. "Don't be so sure of that."

"I'm sure you'll take care of each other," Yamapi said hurriedly before they could start trading flirtatious banter back and forth. There was one more thing he had to say to them before he left. "President Tsubasa gave me a message for you both."

"I knew it!" Kame felt vindicated in his earlier speculation. "What did he say?"

"Just...do it your own way."

"That's it?" Jin spluttered. "That's the entire message?"

Yamapi nodded. "It confused me too, but that's all he said. And it's not like anything could get lost in translation 'cause we were both speaking Japanese..."

Jin's eyes widened. "Maybe it's a code?"

Yamapi hastily signalled to Ensign Tegoshi to teleport him back to the Pin before Jin could rope him into a code-breaking session.


	2. Chapter 2

The KAT-TUN was less than an hour from Venus. While Jin had spent the journey puzzling over the president's message, Kame had been contemplating the question of what to tell Ueda and the others. It didn't matter that the trainees didn't know why they were heading to Venus - they obeyed without question - but there was no way they could keep their command crew in the dark. Already, Nakamaru had been by, asking why they'd changed course, and Ueda had been giving them significant looks, asking them silently what the hell was going on.

There was an unspoken rule onboard that if there was something you didn't talk about, you probably had good reason for doing so and nobody would press you unless you indicated that you wanted pressing. Even with things that affected the entire crew, like unplanned course changes.

But that didn't mean that rumours didn't fly, that nobody got curious.

"We have to tell them," Kame said eventually. "They'll go stir-crazy waiting at the spaceport if we don't give them a reason."

Jin didn't bother pointing out that they were probably already crazy. "We should take them with us; I'd feel safer with backup. There's four of them, they can go in pairs. Yamapi won't arrive until tomorrow, and he can't get to us after we board the train. We've all got more than enough fake IDs."

"We can't," Kame protested. "Weren't you listening to the briefing?"

"I don't care. You know as well as I do they can all keep a secret!"

"Jin!"

"Besides," Jin continued recklessly, figuring that now he'd started, he might as well finish, "President Tsubasa told us to, didn't he? He said to do it our own way."

Comprehension hit Kame so hard he had to sit down. "You mean..."

"Exactly." Jin smirked and sat down next to his partner. "We're not usually in the business of obeying orders, are we? And the president knows that. He and Admiral Takki let us operate as we want because that's how we get results."

Kame frowned. "I agree. But, Jin, do you realise if that's true, you've just confirmed my theory about there being something else going on here? They could've told us openly to take Ueda and the others for back-up - or at least to let our crew know what was going on - and we'd have agreed because that's the smart thing to do. The fact that we're supposed to keep everyone in the dark and isolate ourselves, proves that there's something strange about all this."

"Of course there's something strange," Commander Ueda Tatsuya said from the doorway. "We're obviously going to Venus, not Earth, and I would've thought the two of you would be thrilled at spending some time on the planet of love."

"Instead you're moping over your luggage," Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi added as he followed Ueda inside. "What's the matter? Can't decide which hotel has the most comfortable honeymoon suites?"

Kame grimaced as Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke and Lieutenant Tanaka Koki followed their crewmates inside and made themselves at home in Jin's cabin. There was no going back now. They had to tell them everything.

"I don't like it," Koki opined when Kame was done with the tale. As their man in charge of Security, it was his job to be paranoid. "You'd be leaving yourselves open to who knows what down there."

"The ship will be safe enough with the trainees, docked at Eros City spaceport," Ueda said. "Especially if we leave them Taguchi's game collection to keep them occupied. We're coming with you."

If Taguchi wasn't entirely thrilled by the prospect, he never let it stop him from smiling. "We can't let our captains have all the fun, can we?"

"I'm not sure how much "fun" we're going to have." Jin began to remove the seals on the package from Arashi. "Tracking down some cleaning lady with a stolen photograph in the middle of a bunch of courting couples. Not how I planned to spend my vacation."

"She's obviously not just a "cleaning lady"," Kame pointed out, brandishing his datapad. "According to the disc Commodore Yamashita left us, she was working at the JE Fleet HQ under the name 'Ashiya Mizuki', and her cover held up under their standard personnel background checks. But when she disappeared and they started digging deeper, they came up empty. No technical background whatsoever, no strong political opinions, nothing controversial and definitely no criminal record.

"Yet she disabled a sophisticated security system, stole a photograph that should have had no significance to her, and made it off-world using a perfectly falsified identity."

"Making her about as natural as Taguchi's new hair colour," Nakamaru joked.

In preparation for his up-coming (now postponed) leave on Earth, Taguchi had dyed his hair a bright, screaming blond in an effort to make himself seem more exotic and appealing to the locals. After all, he hadn't set foot on his home planet in over two years, and there was no telling what the current fashions were.

"I thought you guys said you liked the colour!"

Ueda cracked a smile. "That's not *quite* how I remember it..."

"Never mind that," Jin interrupted. "Look what Arashi sent us."

He'd finally managed to get the seals off - no easy task, since they'd let Aiba take care of the packaging and he'd gone overboard. Jin was now covered in animal stickers.

"These must be the gadgets Yamapi was talking about," Kame mused, picking up one of the silvery bands and turning it over in his hand. "Looks like you slip them over the barrel."

Jin pulled out his blaster and tried it out. The band fit perfectly, sliding on with ease...but once it was in place, it locked, refusing to come off again. A thin strip of gold shone down the centre, and if Jin listened closely, he could hear a faint humming, the sound of one of Arashi's unusual electronic pieces at work.

Kame nodded approval and did the same with his own weapon. "Let's hope they work, otherwise we won't be able to get in with so much as a vibraknife."

"And look, Kame." Jin pointed to the remains of the parcel. "They sent six."

\-----

Five hours later, Kame and Jin disembarked from the Eros Express, the only service running between the spaceport and Eros City itself. They each carried a small suitcase containing enough to see them through the week - though nothing that they couldn't abandon if they had to - since it was essential that 'Shinkame Kazuma' and 'Akasei Jinpachi' appeared to be just like all the other tourist lovebirds.

What set them apart from the throng of couples were the guns that each man had concealed in the small of his back. (The advantage of a gene-locked trigger being that there was no chance of firing accidentally and shooting yourself as you walked.) The security guards hadn't frisked them; there was no point, not when the checkpoint scanners could build up a full-body image and even a toothpick would be detected and seized as a weapon. This meant that Jin was minus the knife he usually carried in his right boot and both men were missing their teleport bracelets. Even though the KAT-TUN was in range, the shiny silver bangles would be useless, as all outgoing and incoming transmissions were blocked everywhere in Eros City except those made from the public comm terminals at the station.

Similarly, their comm badges wouldn't work, even to talk between themselves, because the communications were routed through the ship and they, too, would be blocked.

So it was with much regret that the two captains left their ship in the capable hands of top trainee Yabu Kota and his junior crewmates. After making plans with Ueda and the rest, they'd disembarked at the spaceport, submitted themselves to the checks, and bought tickets for the first train to Eros City.

Koki and Nakamaru had left later, spending some quality time in the spaceport shops and trying out the not-nearly-as-stylish-as-anything-MatsuJun-could-design baseball caps. They'd ended up on a different carriage.

Ueda and Taguchi had left last, stopping off for a snack before the security checks, and only just made it onto the same train.

Once the teams had reached the station, they kept a cautious distance from each other. While they still had visual contact, it was necessary to establish a means of communication, and a small rental shop tucked inside the station provided the perfect solution.

"Kind of old-fashioned, aren't they?" Jin said. He was holding a compact, shiny, black cellphone of the type favoured in the early twenty-first century. "Whatever happened to using datbands for personal comms?"

Kame shrugged. "If the sign on the wall is to be believed, telecommunications bangles just aren't romantic enough for this city - if lovers are unfortunate enough to be separated, they want to be able to see each other's faces when they call. These have video capability."

"Oh." Jin flipped his open and switched it on. "Look, Kame! We can have different ringtones! And wallpapers! And-"

"And we can do pretty much anything with them except communicate with anyone outside the city walls," Kame interrupted.

"Right." Jin stopped playing around and located the phonebook function. "Can I have your number?"

Kame looked at him strangely. "Why are you asking me in English?"

"Because," Jin sounded extremely proud of himself, "it's the only common language used in Eros City. We can't rely on anyone outside the tourist industry speaking much Japanese here."

Kame smothered a groan and exchanged numbers with his partner, then urged him away from the rental place so the other two teams could pick up their own cellphones. They waited on a nearby bench and watched as first Koki then Ueda visited the shop, each emerging with a pair.

To exchange numbers, they'd worked out a plan ahead of time. The others would scribble down their details on a scrap of paper and ensure they passed them to Kame, who would send a text message to each of them with the rest. Nakamaru walked past the bench on his way to get an ice cream, casually flicking a tiny ball of paper onto Kame's jacket with all the skill of a Jovian dealer. Taguchi balled up some old wrappers he found in his pockets and began juggling with them, ensuring that when he "accidentally" lost one, it fell into Jin's lap.

Both teams disappeared with their luggage, heading in separate directions to check into pre-arranged hotels. Tourists could only make bookings from the spaceport; reservations were made and paid for during the security process - it was part of checking their credit rating - and upon arrival, visitors handed over their vouchers to the hotel.

The KAT-TUN command crew were all travelling under assumed names, of course, and had excellent credit. The reservations and cellphone rentals had been made using these false identities; Kame distributed the numbers to the others before he and Jin picked up their luggage and departed for their own hotel, a towering, ritzy building by the name of Cupid's Gate.

Public transport round Eros City was mostly a matter of small, bright pink groundcabs; small, bright pink trains; small, bright pink pony carriages and large, cool blue buses. (These last were owned by a different company.)

"You'd think Pi would've signed up for this job himself," Jin murmured to Kame as they hailed one of the open carriages. (The commodore's love of pink was surpassed only by his love of food.)

Kame hushed him and gave instructions to the driver, then climbed up onto the luxurious leather seat. Jin petted the pony for a moment and did the same; it wasn't often he got to see live animals, not now that he was no longer living on Earth, and it gave him great pleasure every time he encountered one. This particular pony, he thought, looked a little like Nakamaru. Perhaps it was the nose.

The ride didn't last long. The hotel was close enough that they could probably have walked to it, even with luggage, but they were supposed to be on holiday, after all, and Kame wanted to savour the feeling of being outdoors again, just for a little.

Freedom felt better than he'd expected, with a gentle breeze cooling his face and Jin's body pressed warmly against his side. Everywhere he looked there were couples (and the occasional group) strolling hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, joined at the hip or just plain liplocked, and there wasn't so much as a hint of unhappiness about them. He could almost allow himself to forget their mission and snuggle contentedly under Jin's arm.

 _Almost._

Because between the skin of his back and the smooth leather of the seat, the solid, dependable presence of his blaster was an excellent reminder that he couldn't get too comfortable. This wasn't their area of expertise - hadn't been even before they gave up their life of piracy - and Kame wasn't at all sure they were up to the task. The commodore had provided a place to start...but the rest was up to them.

"Kame?"

"Hmm?"

"We're here, and I think the pony wants you to pet him."

Still half-lost in his comfortable reverie, Kame patted Jin a couple of times on the head.

"Not me - the pony!"

Both animal and driver were used to the idiosyncrasies of tourists, and the former accepted Kame's apologetic pat with as much grace as the latter accepted Jin's handful of Venusian dollars. For larger expenses a swipe of their false credit cards would do, but when it came to the smaller things in life it was handy to have a ready supply of cash.

Transaction complete, the carriage went on its way, leaving the two captains standing on the grounds of the luxurious Cupid's Gate. The hotel stood twenty storeys high, dominating the local skyline with its colored glass windows and ornamental cherubs, most of whom were pointing their bows and arrows at the tourists.

The cherubs weren't carrying real weapons, so why did Jin keep getting the urge to draw his gun and start using them for target practice? One of them in particular, one shifty-eyed, suspicious-looking little archer, irritated the hell out of him for no reason he could figure.

He plucked at Kame's sleeve as they walked towards the opulent front doors. "Kame?"

"I'm not petting you again, Jin. At least wait till we get to our room."

"Not that," Jin hissed. "Look at the cherub behind us!"

Kame turned. There were over a dozen of the tiny winged creatures behind them. "Any one in particular?"

"That one! The one with the wings."

Jin couldn't have been less helpful if he'd tried. "A little more specific?" Kame said.

"The one on top of that pedestal. No, don't look, it might see you!"

Kame gave his partner a tight smile. "You just told me to look, now you don't want me to? Make up your mind, Jin."

"Look, but don't let it see you looking," Jin said. "I don't want it to know that we're onto it."

"Of course, that would never do..." Kame surreptitiously peeked back at the cherub in question, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and hustled Jin towards reception. "It's only a statue," he told him firmly. "A small, kind of goofy-looking statue. I really don't think it's up to anything."

Jin disagreed. "It was facing the other way when we walked in, and turned round the moment we passed it. It's watching us, don't you feel it?"

As if to prove him wrong, the cherub promptly spun round on its pedestal to face an entirely new direction.

"See? It rotates at intervals, just like the one in the centre of the foyer fountain." Kame tried to sound reassuring, rather than mocking, but it was difficult to keep the derision out of his voice when Jin was so clearly jumping at shadows. This whole stupid mission was going to make them both paranoid if they let it, and Kame wanted to enjoy his - working - vacation.

"But the eyes-"

"Maybe it's part of the hotel security system," Kame conceded. "I could believe that. But it's not watching for *us*, Jin."

Reluctantly, Jin let himself be convinced. It was embarrassing, the way Kame was handling being planet-side again so much better than he was, and they couldn't afford to slip up. Getting freaked out by a dumb statue, no matter how creepy it was, was not allowed.

Checking in was a speedy process and since they didn't have enough luggage to warrant assistance, Jin and Kame were left to make their own way up to the third floor, Room 369.

Forgetting for a moment about their mission, Jin immediately threw himself down on the king-sized bed, bouncing a couple of times to check for springiness. He did not find it wanting.

Kame, ever the practical one, brought Jin's abandoned suitcase into the room and closed the door. He tested the lock, which satisfied him as much as the bed had pleased Jin.

It was a nice room, as Venusian hotel rooms went, with a plush red carpet and gold-trimmed furniture. There was no comm terminal, of course - guests could contact each other or the front desk using a small, voice-only console mounted near the bed - and the tinted windows let the sunshine pour in while hiding the room's occupants from outside eyes. Naturally, if not for the heavy-duty terraforming and the atmosphere generation project undertaken by the first colonists from Earth, there would have been no windows at all, much less a balcony.

"This isn't bad," Jin commented. "Not as bouncy as those Jovian low-grav mattresses, but not bad."

"Just try not to break this one," Kame advised as he began to transfer the contents of his small case into the wardrobe. "At least, not until Saturday night. Are you going to unpack?"

"Is it worth it?"

"We're on holiday, remember?"

Jin was about to contradict his partner when he realised that even in their hotel room, it probably wasn't a good idea to break cover. No talking about anything important. Fine, Jin was good at that.

He unpacked his own case while Kame investigated the luxurious en-suite bathroom; judging by the younger captain's shout of delight, it was equipped with a hot tub. They'd had one installed on the KAT-TUN but the jets were prone to breaking and they'd worn it out after escaping the living space station. (If they couldn't scrub themselves on the inside, at least they could feel clean on the outside again, though Jin wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to wash away those memories, no matter how many hot baths he took.)

"There's plenty of time for that later," Kame said as Jin joined him in the bathroom, looking longingly at the taps. "It's the middle of the afternoon, Jin!"

"So?"

"So I'd like to get some fresh air after being stuck on that train for three hours." They both knew Kame wasn't just talking about the Eros Express. "Besides, if you bath now you'll be horribly lazy for the rest of the day, get restless in the evening, and drag me out for a walk at midnight or something."

Jin tried to look hurt but since Kame laughed at his expression, he figured he hadn't done a very good job of it. "All right. Where did you want to go?"

Kame pulled out his cellphone and sent a text to Taguchi and Nakamaru. "I thought we could try that place your friend recommended."

 **_Meanwhile..._ **

In a small inn across the street from Cupid's Gate, Taguchi, having accidentally changed his cellphone message setting to 'vibrate', jumped a mile when Kame's text came through.

"Careful," Ueda advised. "You nearly fell out the window."

As the owners of the tiny, quaint little building had planted rosebushes along the front of the property, Taguchi thought he'd better change his settings. Even though it would have been a short fall - the inn being a bungalow - he'd still have ended up with a faceful of thorns.

He pulled out his phone and read Kame's message. "They're on the move."

"Then we should probably get going."

Ueda ran a comb through his freshly-dyed red hair, trying in vain to do something about the girly flips at the end, and made sure his air gun was hidden securely beneath his denim jacket. He'd picked it up from a weapons dealer in Okinawa on their last trip to Earth. The gun looked like a toy - all shiny plastics - but there was nothing childish about its ability to convert gases into solids. By its very nature, the weapon was never loaded, but Ueda could fire it almost anywhere. After all, if he found himself without oxygen, not being able to use his gun would be the least of his problems.

"Think we'll get to do any sightseeing while we're here?" Taguchi asked as he checked the powerpack in his own equipment.

Years of playing VR video games had made him a crack shot with almost any weapon you cared to name, but the one he favoured (which bore a remarkable resemblance to the gun used in Interplanetary Space-Duck Hunt) was a variation on the standard illegal nerve-disrupter, one with no function other than to induce uncontrollable fits of laughter in the target. It wouldn't kill anyone - not without continuous exposure - but it would certainly incapacitate them.

"You're thinking about that arcade the guidebook mentioned, aren't you?"

Taguchi gave Ueda his most winning smile. "It wouldn't hurt to take a look, would it?"

Ueda smiled back. "Later. Let's see what our friends are up to, shall we?"

 **_Twenty minutes later..._ **

"Why do we get stuck in the one down the street?" Nakamaru complained. "If anything happens we'll be miles away."

"Because you lost at Janken," Koki pointed out. "I told you I should've done it."

Given that the last time they'd played the game for stakes of anywhere near this magnitude, Nakamaru had wound up as an ensign despite being the oldest of the crew, he had to admit that perhaps he'd been having a run of bad luck. Jin had always been their captain (and Kame would've too, if he'd been in the military at the time), but after that they'd ended up playing for ranks, much to the despair of Commodore Yamashita who'd tried to insist that such a thing just wasn't done.

Because if it *was* done, he wanted to be an admiral.

"It's not like our hotel's that bad," Koki continued. "I checked it out; all the rooms are soundproof. Know what that means?"

Nakamaru definitely did. "We can practise as much as we want without a certain lovable idiot sneaking in and recording us! You've been working on a new rap, right?"

Koki proceeded to give his partner a quick sample of his latest effort as they strolled casually past the hotels, clubs, shops and eating establishments that made up Main Street, Eros City. Nakamaru readily joined in, beatboxing a rough accompaniment. Most of the people walking past were too wrapped up in their own lives to notice, many of them holding hands.

The KAT-TUN's top Security man and resident hotshot pilot were not, however. Neither of them wanted their gun arms to be occupied.

Nakamaru's weapon of choice, like Taguchi's, was designed to incapacitate rather than kill, which had been of considerable use to them in their pirate days. Each target required two shots: the first, to prepare their ears; the second, which was actually a series of rapid pulses, gave them a high-frequency headache for a couple of hours, rendering them sightless and soundless for a while.

Koki's gun had started out life as a regulation military blaster, plain and simple, but there was no way he could resist making modifications. The converter had been souped up so each powerpack lasted three times as long as before, there was an option to use all the remaining power in a single shot, and the original barrel had been replaced with a much shorter one with the legend 'JOKER' emblazoned on the side.

Of course, they hadn't been able to bring extra powerpacks. The scanners would've picked them up immediately. Only Jin and Kame didn't have to concern themselves with running out - their weapons could convert almost any form of matter into power, regardless of state. Not that anybody was expecting a long, drawn-out gunfight in Eros City. At least, not yet.

"You think they'll be okay?" Koki asked, nodding ever-so-slightly at the distant figures of Jin and Kame, who were walking thirty feet ahead of them. "Don't they look kind of tired to you?"

Nakamaru scratched his head. "They had a rough time recently, didn't they? I don't remember much of the dream I was having then - just that sound, you know? - but what they saw..."

Even thinking about what they'd found in NCG-whatever made Koki shudder, and he'd been lucky enough not to see it. Jin and Kame had told the others everything once they'd woken them up, but they'd kept to a strictly neutral briefing, hadn't discussed it since, and clammed up if anyone tried to approach them about it.

"I guess they'll be okay so long as they've got each other," he said.

"And the rest of us!" Nakamaru added.

"Yeah, but they won't have us for much longer if you don't get a move on!"

 **_Meanwhile..._ **

If he ignored the weight of his gun, the fake ID in his pocket and the fact that he was being followed at a distance by four of his friends, Kame could imagine himself to be on a genuine vacation, one taken for nothing but pleasure, which, really, was the only reason anyone came to Eros City. It catered for the romantics, the lovestruck, the wordless and the weird: no matter what you wanted out of your love life, you could find it here.

"It's nice to see the sun from a planet again, isn't it?" Jin commented. "You can't feel it on a ship."

Kame agreed, the warmth was very pleasant. He was looking forward to doing some serious basking in the sunlight as soon as the chance arose. Being outdoors again was...simply wonderful. He'd forgotten what it was like to breathe air filtered by nothing more than nature, to watch (imported) birds alight on trees, only to take flight again in the open skies. No virtual experience with the CNS Plus could ever have felt quite so real.

He consulted his personal datapad for directions. Everything private was locked, hidden and heavily encrypted, of course, so any prying Venusian officials would find nothing more incriminating than a handful of photographs of himself and Jin, a couple of novels for when he got bored, and a copy of the Eros City guidebook.

One thing they definitely wouldn't find: the collection of data Yamapi had brought, copied across from the disc.

"If we take a left here, the restaurant should be a couple of blocks down," Kame said, shutting down the datapad and returning it to his jacket pocket. "It comes highly recommended by our friend."

"Pi eats anything," Jin reminded him. "I don't know how much we should trust his choice in restaurants."

Kame caught Jin's hand where it was swinging free by his side and gave it a squeeze, murmuring, "We're not going there for the food. I mean, we are, because it'll look strange if we don't eat anything and I know you've got to be starved by now-"

"You have *no* idea."

"-but we're going to this particular restaurant because this 'Ashiya Mizuki', under the name 'Kotani Nobuko', listed it as her destination, according to Pi's man at the spaceport. It checked out, which means she definitely arrived there - assuming they weren't lying, of course."

Not all visitors to Eros City stayed in tourist establishments - some had friends or relatives living there. So when they had to state their destination at the spaceport, instead of making a hotel reservation, they provided the contact details of their host, who had to confirm with the staff that this was the case. When the visitors arrived at their destination, the host, even if it was a hotel, had to check in with the spaceport staff to inform them of this.

Jin groaned. "I hope they weren't lying. I want her to be there so we can get what we came for, get a late lunch and get out of here. I still feel like we're being watched."

Kame gave a little jerk of his head to the street behind them, indicating that yes, idiot, of course they were being watched...by their own crew. Jin felt rather sheepish after that.

"This is as much a city of voyeurs as anything else, though," Kame said. "Maybe we *are* being watched. I know I wouldn't mind watching you all day."

Jin blanched. "Then I really would get paranoid - even if it was you. Besides, it's not like I do anything much worth watching."

"It's not what you do, it's who you are."

Kame's surprise moment of unabashed romanticism made Jin smile: a sweet, lopsided curve with a hint of playful sparkle. "I could watch Kame all day too," he admitted. "I've got a lot of time to make up for."

"Just don't get confused and start watching Tat-chan by mistake, or I'll have to shoot you."

Temptation very nearly drove Jin to turn round and look at Ueda, but he beat it into submission and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the street instead. "I guess he does look a bit like you now, with that red hair. But only a teeny, tiny little bit; I'd never mix the two of you up."

"You'd better not."

Kame's jealousy, as Jin well knew, was not to be taken lightly. After all, he'd tried to wipe out humanity in the belief that Jin had been having an affair with Yamapi.

Fortunately, Kame didn't sound insanely jealous, merely teasing. Maybe the planet of love was rubbing off on him.

And now he just sounded confused. "You know, I think we've taken a wrong turn somewhere..."

Jin scanned their surroundings. They'd come out by a very familiar-looking plaza, bordered by shops on two sides, with a ring of benches round a central marble statue. While the place was reasonably crowded, full of happy couples enjoying the sunny afternoon, there was enough space for him to spot Ueda and Taguchi emerging from another side street, both looking as confused as Kame sounded.

"I'd say so. Weren't we here five minutes ago?"

Kame nodded. "And the restaurant's less than ten minutes from our hotel. I'd better look at the directions again."

(Across the plaza, Ueda was consulting his own Eros City guidebook - a print copy, since he thought it made a good souvenir - and wondering why the two captains had been walking round in circles.)

Jin paused by a bench, thinking to wait while Kame checked the map, but Kame kept going, walking in a daze as he skimmed his datapad. Before Jin realised he was standing by himself, his partner was halfway across the plaza; Ueda and Taguchi, heads bent over the former's guidebook, didn't notice Kame's approach.

Ah, that was it. They should've taken a *right* at the Oceanic Memorial, not a left. Kame was elated to find he hadn't messed up too badly with the directions. He turned to Jin to give him the good news, but Jin was no longer by his side. He swept the square in a glance, locating Jin waiting impatiently on a bench, and opened his mouth to call him over.

Before he could form a single word, the crack of a gunshot split the air, causing tourists and natives alike to fall silent.

Across the plaza, a bloodstained Eros City guidebook fluttered to the ground.


	3. Chapter 3

For a moment, nobody moved. The plaza was a painting, a photograph, a holostill...a single image, frozen in time. Jin felt as though his heart had stopped with that shot.

Then Kame was at his side, breathing hard and far too fast. "We need to move. Let's go."

"But Ueda..." Jin protested weakly.

"Ueda is going to be fine. I was a lot closer than you were and the shot hit his arm, that's all. The others are with him now, look."

Sure enough, Koki and Nakamaru had caught up, and were even now with Ueda and Taguchi, waiting for a medic. It was difficult to make out what was going on through the crowd of gawkers; still, Ueda was sitting up, holding his arm, and while he looked pale and decidedly unhappy, he didn't appear to be in any danger of bleeding to death.

"Either they'll pretend to be strangers or they won't - whatever they do, we'll have to wait to find out about it." Kame took Jin's elbow and steered him down an alley, keeping his voice low. "It doesn't look like the shooter stuck around for an encore, but I'm positive the shot came from over here."

"And you want to go looking for the person responsible? Are you crazy?"

The gleam in Kame's eyes suggested that he just might be. "I want to know if this was some random attack or if there's something else behind it."

Jin edged cautiously along the wall, almost tripping over the remains of a broken vending machine. "Who'd want to attack Ueda? Other than guys he's beaten in fights, of course, and then there's a certain ambassador who hates his guts..."

Without warning, Kame ground to a halt and put out a hand to stop Jin in his tracks. "More to the point," he murmured, "who else in this city has a gun? Tourists can't bring them in; the only residents allowed them are the security staff, and they all have blasters - no bullets involved."

Jin shrugged. "Does it matter? Either some local didn't bother to declare their weapons cache and has been hanging onto it all this time or somebody else did the same as us and sneaked it in."

"Or they had help." Kame's voice was grim. "The shot had to have come from somewhere around here."

"This is a dead end."

Jin looked around the cluttered and poorly-lit alley, but it was impossible to tell if any of the refuse had been disturbed recently. There were broken machine parts, old boxes, scraps of rusted metal - the not-so-shiny side of the city, lying behind the glittering front. It ended in a solid brick wall, with a long building on either side. One had a tiny window set high in the wall, but there were no other access routes.

Kame looked up at the wall at the back. "You think the shooter could've climbed over that?"

"He must've been very nimble, in that case. He couldn't have made the shot from back here, and it's not like there's much solid enough to climb on."

"True. Give me a boost?"

"You're kidding me."

"I'm serious, Jin. I want to take a look."

If it would make Kame happy and get them out of this damned dark alley and back out into the sunshine, Jin would do it. He crouched down and linked his hands to give his partner a step up, and Kame sprang lightly to the top of the wall.

"There's something on the other side," Kame called, and before Jin could stop him, he'd turned and jumped down to the ground below.

"Kame!"

"Stop imagining me lying on the ground with two broken legs, Jin."

Kame's voice was quiet but perfectly clear, and Jin thanked his lucky stars that no one was around to see the guilty expression on his face. Two broken legs had been the best case scenario, in his imagination.

"Are you all right? What's on the other side?"

There was some slight scrabbling from over the wall, then Kame appeared at the top, holding a rope in his hand. "This. You can't see it from your side, but it's attached to a ring to my right." Jin strained, and could scarcely distinguish the small, metal circle on the building wall. "It's only more gloomy passage on this side - you can just throw the rope down whichever side of the wall you want to climb up, then draw it over after yourself."

Kame demonstrated by tossing the rope to Jin, then jumping down himself. "But that wasn't what caught my attention. I also found *this*."

He held out a torn scrap of paper - coloured on one side; white, with black writing, on the other. Jin couldn't see clearly enough, not in such bad light, but he figured Kame wasn't any better off.

"There's obviously no one here," Jin pointed out. "Except us, and we didn't shoot anyone. Can we go back to civilisation now so I can actually see that paper?"

Kame grinned and tucked it away in his pocket. "Yeah, I can't see it either. There's some broken iron spikes on the other side - you have to be really careful how you go down - and it was caught on one. Maybe it's nothing, I don't know, but at least we've just proved it's possible to get in and out of this alley."

That turned out to be a blessing, as City Security had cordoned off the entire plaza and the only people left in the area were wearing uniforms and looking unfriendly. Of Ueda, Taguchi and the rest, there was no sign. Kame and Jin noticed before they reached the mouth of the alley, and were able to slip back down and use the rope before being seen.

As Kame had reported, this led them to the back of another alley, this one slightly cleaner as it was bracketed by a coffeeshop and a bakery. Jin insisted that he needed something sweet; Kame wasn't about to argue. They made use of the bathroom facilities at the coffeeshop - Kame, in particular, was quite a sight - then popped into the bakery and emerged with a chocolate muffin each.

"This isn't getting us any closer to our restaurant."

"No," Jin admitted through a mouthful of muffin, "but at the rate we're going I'd have starved to death long before we got there. I knew I shouldn't have let you talk me out of eating at the spaceport."

Kame neatly dodged a flying chocolate chip. "We'd have been late for the train."

He pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket; it didn't make much more sense in full daylight. On one side there were four printed numbers - clearly part of a larger whole, as enough remained to the left to indicate that there was at least one other figure present. The other side was a fragment of a photograph, though not enough to identify the subject. A black sweater and a few strands of red hair. Not much to go on.

Jin snatched up the paper and stared. _Red hair...and those numbers..._

"That can't be...Ueda, can it?" Kame asked hesitantly. "The shooter had a picture?"

The numbers clicked into place for Jin. Anger began to bubble under the surface, mingling with fear - but not for himself. He crumpled the paper, ignoring Kame's protests. "That's not Ueda.

"It's you."

Kame didn't want to believe him. "Jin, there are thousands of people who could fit that picture."

"Yeah, but only one who was in the line of fire *and* has that ID number. Ueda's ends in a five, not a one."

They weren't carrying their real identity documents with them, of course, but every soldier in the United Solar Navy, even those in the JE Fleet, had an ID number assigned to them upon joining. They also had their photos taken.

Kame, who'd been the last of the KAT-TUN crew to sign up, hadn't paid much attention to the details. Being under shipboard arrest, especially when the ship in question was the least military in the entire fleet, had allowed him to ignore the technicalities. Consequently, his mind hadn't made the same leap that Jin's had.

"Those numbers do look sort of familiar," he allowed. "I can't check right now, but-"

"You don't have to - I know it by heart." Jin was certain enough for the both of them. "That's your number and this is a copy of the photograph in your file. Kame, whoever shot Ueda was after you, and what's more, they have access to military records. I really don't like this."

Kame shrugged and strangled the tendril of fear that was beginning to creep round his digestive system. "So much for being undercover. I knew I should've said no to all this playing detective stuff - do I look like that Kindaichi guy?"

"Maybe a little..."

Just as Kame swallowed the last bite of muffin, his cellphone beeped at him. He took one look at the message, furrowed his brows so tightly that his facial muscles screamed, and handed it to Jin.

"Here, it's from Koki. I think he meant to send it to you."

"What makes you say that?"

Kame grimaced. "It's written in rap."

Jin, who'd acquired a fair knowledge of rap from eavesdropping on Koki in the shower, translated the message with relative ease. "He says Ueda's okay, the bullet just grazed him and he's being patched up now. If we send our location, they'll catch up with us.

"Oh, and he says something really colourful about one of the medics, but I can't make it out."

Kame peered at the tiny screen. "Those are system characters, Jin."

"Right. I knew that." Jin returned the phone to its (temporary) owner. "If we move now, they'll never find us. Should we send a reply and wait?"

While Jin amused himself by toying with the windchimes hanging from the bakery's front door, Kame mulled it over. By the time Jin had managed to tangle two of his bangles in the twisted mess, he had an answer.

"They know our destination," he murmured as he helped his partner free himself. "They can catch up. Even if someone knows who we are, it's not going to hurt us to just go and *look* at the restaurant, is it? There'll be other customers - it's not like no one will notice if anything happens. What did you *do* to this thing?"

Jin looked balefully at Kame from beneath his lashes. "I didn't do anything! It got tangled by itself."

"Let's just get going before the owner kills us for destroying his windchimes."

\-----

As it turned out, the much sought-after restaurant was a mere five minutes away, though in completely the opposite direction. Kame contemplated deleting the guidebook from his datapad and reclaiming the disk space, but decided against it on the grounds that it contained reviews of the city's restaurants and he figured those would come in handy later. The last time he and Jin had eaten out had been nearly two and a half years ago, and they had a lot to make up for.

Jin squealed with delight when he saw the red, white and green flags, momentarily forgetting to be apprehensive. "You didn't tell me this place was Italian!"

Kame pretended he'd known all along. "I wanted to surprise you," he said smoothly.

In truth, he hadn't noticed, not having read the review. It wasn't as if the name gave it away, after all - there was nothing Italian about 'The GOLD Butterfly'.

Although it was between mealtimes, the restaurant was open and packed with customers - the side-effect of only being able to serve tourists for one week a year - and business looked to be brisk. Brightly-dressed staff darted between tables with practised ease, balancing plates stacked in impossible combinations. Soothing instrumentals played in the background - classic jazz from Earth, a few numbers from Saturn's brief swing revival, and the odd Venusian lullaby.

Jin didn't need to ask whether they should sit inside or outside. If there was snooping to be done, inside it was.

"Table for two, please."

They were initially shown to a table by the window, but Kame wanted easier access to the 'staff only' areas, over by the kitchen, and got it by claiming that his partner got panicky by windows after a traumatic childhood incident involving a soccer ball, a rainbow and an awful lot of broken glass.

Five minutes later, a mortified Jin was taking his seat, facing away from the window, at a small table in the back of the room. Fortunately, the lighting was tinted red enough to cover his embarrassment. He waited until they'd ordered before making an issue of it.

"Why'd you have to say the story the story was about *me*? Did you see the look on that girl's face? She probably thinks I'm going to start screaming any minute now."

Kame grinned. "Nope, I'm pretty sure the only thing she's thinking about is how cute you are when you blush. Good work on the distraction, Jin."

Jin heaved a sigh and gave up. "Thanks..."

Once both men had been served and Jin had made an excellent start on appeasing his hunger - the muffin had been very small - the conversation naturally turned to their next move.

"We can't just ask for Kotani, or whatever her name is," Kame reasoned, pitching his voice to carry to Jin's ears alone. "She'll take off again if she knows someone's here for her."

"She might be long gone by now." Jin stared gloomily into his water glass. "Hiding out somewhere else, where we'll never find her."

Kame twirled a strand of spaghetti around his fork and watched it slip back into the sauce. If he wasn't careful, he'd let Jin's pessimism affect him too. His partner was ordinarily cheerful, but he'd been uneasy about their mission since the very beginning and the possibility that someone was targeting Kame had done nothing to lift his spirits.

"We can't ask but we can check the place out for ourselves," he ventured at last. "I showed you the pictures, we both know what she looks like, and maybe we'll find something here. She can't leave before Sunday any more than we can, and she'd have to be an idiot to try the codes while she's here. Scanning the photograph wouldn't do her any good - the transmission would be blocked.

"And I don't think this woman's an idiot, Jin."

Jin's penne arabiatta suddenly didn't seem quite so appetizing. "Neither do I...though I wonder if someone thinks *we* are."

"What?"

He shook his head. "Forget it. You stay here; I'll go take a look around."

"You're forgetting something."

It was Jin's turn to be puzzled. "What? Do I have sauce on my chin?"

"Actually, you do, but that's not what I meant." Kame picked up Jin's serviette and dabbed gently around his partner's mouth, prompting a pair of elderly female diners at the next table to start fanning themselves with the menu. "Right now you're blocking me from view. If someone really is targeting me, the moment you get up they'll have a clear shot."

"Why bother, when they could just poison your food?" Jin said carelessly, then gasped and tugged Kame's plate away from him. "You could already have been poisoned!"

"Jin, I've already eaten half of this and I'm pretty sure it's not going to kill me." Kame retrieved his meal. "But if I suddenly keel over and and die, feel free to tell me you told me so."

"Fine," Jin sulked. "You go. I'll stay here and...chat up the waitresses or something."

He was expecting Kame to make a jealous objection, but to his surprise, his partner actually seemed to like the idea. "Good plan. Get them talking, see if anyone new's shown up lately, that sort of thing. There's bound to be a gossipy one."

Girls were something of an unknown quantity, these days. There were none in the JE Fleet - plenty of make-up and cross-dressing, of course, but no actual girls. Consequently, Jin was over two years out of practice at talking to them, and Kame's most recent experience had been playing war games with the Fahngarlians. Jin didn't want to contemplate what sort of gossip *that* involved.

Kame downed the remainder of his water, rose to his feet and looked around for the bathroom. He knew perfectly well it was behind him and to his left, but he had to at least appear to give legitimacy to his wandering off from the table mid-meal. Giving Jin an apologetic smile, he headed down the back. Nobody paid him any heed.

If they had, they'd have noticed him bypassing the men's room altogether in favour of a small staircase, visible only through the tiny window of an emergency door.

Left to his own devices, Jin slowly chewed another couple of mouthfuls of pasta, not really tasting it despite the spicy sauce, and tried to look innocent. Innocence was a relative term, and in the legal sense, Jin hadn't been innocent since he and Yamapi had first started working for old man Kitagawa.

But innocence, as an abstract concept, was something Jin had never lost. It had been tempered by experience, maybe - fired in a forge of cynicism, shaped by his trials - but never lost. For all that he'd spent nearly half his life working on the opposite side of the law, had his heart broken into tiny pieces by Kame, and dreamed of a cracked, diseased computer bulging with human flesh, he'd managed to cling onto his innate purity.

That purity, that childlike wonder, was what drew people to him. Mostly. Everyone else just came to admire the pretty.

Had the restaurant been less crowded, that alone might have brought Jin some conversation without the necessity of movement. As it was, talking to waitresses (or even waiters) was out of the question; every server was bustling, no time to stop. If anyone even looked his way, it was only to check that he was still eating and therefore probably not yet interested in being presented with his bill.

Since his back was to the majority of the restaurant, Jin watched the servers using the mirrored band on his watch strap. There were plenty of dark-haired women, but none who even remotely resembled his quarry.

Five minutes passed, then ten, then another five. Kame's food grew cold, and Jin polished off his own with considerably less enthusiasm than usual. To outward appearances his frequent glances at his watch were merely a sign of his impatience as he waited for his dining companion to return from the bathroom.

What _could_ Kame be doing up there? Had he been caught poking around in forbidden areas, and escorted out the back door by a pair of heavy hands? Had he accidentally locked himself in a hidden room and was even now waiting for Jin to rescue him? (Jin dismissed that thought on the grounds that if Kame was simply stuck, he'd surely have sent a text message.)

"Your friend's been gone a long time," one of the elderly ladies from the next table commented, leaning across the gap to speak to Jin. "You don't think he's stuck you with the bill, do you?"

"And he looked like such a nice young man, too," the other woman clucked sympathetically. "Never mind, dear. I'm sure you'll meet someone better soon."

It figured that the only people in the whole damn restaurant who even noticed Kame was gone were two old dears; Jin thought perhaps he and Kame had gone overboard with the paranoia.

He leaned across to meet the women halfway. "He's got a delicate stomach," he murmured, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the bathroom and relishing the opportunity to get his own back on Kame, even if it was only a little. "He knows he shouldn't eat such rich foods but he insists on coming here for me, isn't that sweet?"

"Charming," one of the women agreed.

"Delightful," the other chimed in.

Jin clapped one hand to his mouth and gave them a 'just between you and me' look. "To be honest, I wish he wouldn't bother. He knows he'll be in the bathroom all night now so it's not like we can enjoy the meal together anyway..."

He heaved an enormous sigh, eliciting further sympathy - though he had to turn down an invitation to join the women at their table, claiming that Kame was also insanely jealous (which was not, Jin felt, much of an exaggeration) and would be furious if he emerged from the men's room to find Jin dining with such beautiful young ladies.

It was obvious flattery, but it worked. The women retreated to their own table, blushing and giggling, and Jin congratulated himself on his ingenuity.

He was just trying to decide whether or not to go ahead and order dessert when a stray glance at his watch strap chased all thoughts of food from his head. They hadn't discussed, he and Kame, what to do if Jin found something interesting while Kame was snooping around. That, Jin thought grimly, was something they were going to have to recify as soon as humanly possible.

 _Because Ashiya Mizuki, or Kotani Nobuko, or whatever her name was, was about to walk out the restaurant door._

Jin made a rough mental calculation of the bill, threw down what he hoped would be enough, and began to follow her.

They weren't cut out for this - none of them were, he knew. They were good on ships, on space stations, around ports. Confined spaces, limited worlds designed and measured, made of metal and full of recycled air. In the old days, they could make an crystal run to Alpha Centauri faster than any other ship out there, easily avoiding the authorities. They'd been able to stop and strip cruisers from Ganymede in less time than it took their pilots to recover from being stunned. They'd even, during one particularly impressive month, broken through a planetary blockade to deliver a shipment of weapons.

 _That_ was what they were good at. Jin liked the freedom of life beyond the skies, had done since the first time he'd gone up in a shuttle, and as much as he liked spending his down-time on planets, he knew he couldn't work on one.

But that was exactly what he and Kame - all of them, really - were being asked to do now. To apply their mixed bag of skills to what was definitely not a case for regular JE Fleet personnel, much less a bunch of ex-space pirates. Yamapi, of all people, should have known how unsuited they were for the mission. Earth President Tsubasa and Admiral Takki knew it too.

 _So why the hell were they there?_

It didn't make sense.

Jin didn't have the time to worry about it, not right then. Kotani was walking fast, with the single-minded stride of a woman who knows exactly where she's going. He found an elastic buried in one jacket pocket and pulled his hair back into a short ponytail, then donned his sunglasses. It was the closest he could get to a cunning disguise on short notice.

It wasn't the first time he'd had to tail someone. That had been a man in Lunar City Major - or 'Lunacy' for short. Some slick, smart-talking creep who'd made the mistake of trying to blackmail old man Kitagawa himself. Jin had been sixteen - he hadn't been contracted for the hit. He'd just been told to follow the guy, find out if he was working for himself or if higher-ups were involved, and get out of the way.

Things had gone horribly wrong. Jin had found himself cornered and outnumbered in a blind alley, tables turned, and if Ikuta Toma hadn't shown up - he'd been on another job, had run across the ambush accidentally - things could have gotten very nasty. After that, Jin had taken up carrying a knife at all times, a habit he held onto more than a decade later.

At least this time, he was better armed. That gave him more confidence as he weaved through the pedestrians, hanging back far enough that if Kotani stopped, he could keep walking a little and make it look natural, but not so far that he couldn't keep her in sight.

It must've been a good twenty minutes he walked. He didn't dare take his eyes off Kotani long enough to type a text message on his phone, and if he called, he might draw unwelcome attention to Kame. He didn't want to disturb Ueda, figured Taguchi was probably still with him, and Koki and Nakamaru's phones were both busy - most likely talking to each other, Jin speculated.

Their route took them further and further away from the restaurant, down unfamiliar streets, where the crowds began to dwindle and there were fewer stalls and stores to use as cover. Kotani's speed never varied, even as her steps strayed into the shadows.

Jin didn't think she'd noticed him. She hadn't glanced back over her denim-jacketed shoulder, or stolen gazes in shop windows.

But that didn't make him feel any more at ease.

At long last, Kotani drew to a halt. Jin checked out his surroundings. They'd taken a circuitous route round the back of the street, spent the last three blocks looking at fire exits and trash cans. Not much of a tourist attraction. The sun was sinking rapidly behind the buildings, and the whole area was taking on a gloomy grey cast.

Kotani had paused at a wire gate; she turned and glanced nervously behind her. Jin scarcely managed to duck round the corner in time to avoid being seen. Kotani opened the gate and slipped through into the courtyard beyond, letting the metal fall back into place with a muffled bang.

Since the fence was wire too, Jin was able to watch his quarry ring the rear doorbell of what he thought might be a club, based on the cracked heart hanging over the door and the mountain of cigarette ends, old lipsticks and broken high heels that littered the courtyard. Eros City slums?

The door opened. Kotani exchanged a few fast words with whoever was responsible and darted inside.

Jin waited a couple of minutes, but Kotani didn't seem to be coming back. He decided to risk getting close enough to peer through the lighted windows on the ground floor. Trespassing was hardly a novelty for him, given his original choice of career.

Carefully, he lifted the latch on the gate and tiptoed through, keeping a wary eye both fore and aft. Once on the other side, he moved quickly to the wall and stuck to it like Yamapi to food, losing himself in the shadow of the oncoming evening.

There were filmy curtains hanging at the windows that permitted light but little else to escape; Jin strained to catch a glimpse of the building's interior without alerting the inhabitants to his presence. The window closest to him was open, and the few inches of space allowed the breeze to ruffle the curtains enough that this wasn't completely impossible.

They also allowed him to eavesdrop.

Not much - the voices were low, and coming from the other side of the room - but enough for him to realise that hanging around much longer would be a really bad idea.

"...shot...wrong...you...Kamenashi is..." That voice belonged to a woman. Kotani? She sounded younger than Jin had expected - younger, and extremely annoyed.

"Couldn't...it...hair," a man apologised. "Next...won't..."

"Better not," a second man said. He spoke louder than the others, and clear enough that Jin could detect a familiar quality to his voice, though he couldn't place it. "We only have till Sunday. Once Kamenashi leaves here he could go anywhere in the universe."

"Then...won't...Titan," the first man complained. "What makes...think...stay?"

"He won't leave, not until he retrieves that," the second man said with evident satisfaction. "Is it still safe?"

Through the rippling curtains, Jin watched Kotani retrieve a rectangular packet from the folds of her clothing. It was about the right size, he thought, to contain the stolen photograph. She held it out for the two men to inspect, and one of the pair leaned across far enough to bring him into Jin's line of sight.

It was turning out to be quite a day for surprises. Despite the distortion caused by the fabric and murky window glass, Jin would be willing to swear he recognised the man. He knew the voice had been familiar, and the thick, bright crop of hair was no stranger to him either.

But the last time Jin had seen Ikuta Toma, over a decade ago, they'd both been on Earth and still working for old man Kitagawa. What was he doing in Eros City?

Jin didn't have more than a few seconds to speculate on the subject before the stunner blast wiped all conscious thought from his mind.


	4. Chapter 4

There was definitely something to be said for staying on your own ship and not getting involved in other people's stupid missions, Jin thought. You were a lot less likely to get knocked out that way.

By the time he woke up, sore from slumping to the ground and irritable from the familiar stunner-induced headache, it was full dark. The lights were out and the windows were all closed: if there was anyone left inside the building, they were round the front.

And Jin wasn't going to check. Not now, when even standing up straight was an adventure all of its own. Whoever his assailant was, they'd left him lying by the wall, tucked neatly out of the way, but hadn't made any attempt to hurt him. They hadn't even bothered to search him, or they'd surely have removed his gun. It was as if he was completely inconsequential.

Inconsequential or not, he was relieved to be (relatively) unharmed. He pulled out his phone to check for damage - he'd landed on it, and figured he'd have a nice bruise on his chest by morning - and discovered that his inbox was completely full.

From the looks of things, Kame had been sending him messages for the last couple of hours.

There were missed calls as well, but those were from his other friends too, and there were so many lights blinking angrily at him that Jin was amazed he hadn't noticed any of this taking place. Though he *had* been unconscious at the time, so it was hardly his fault he'd been ignoring everyone.

Jin didn't want to wait around for more trouble to appear, and there was no way he was going to attempt to sneak inside. Trailing his fingers lightly along the wall for balance, he made his way out the courtyard. No one would see him on the unlit backstreets - if he wanted to catch a ride back to the hotel he was going to have to go round the front.

At least the lights were brighter there. A gaudy red sign, a glittering neon cracked heart, proclaimed the building to be the 'Heartbreak Club'. A smaller sign underneath declared that this was the best place to recover from your broken heart, and that in another hour, the doors would be open to help you start the healing process.

Jin's heart was perfectly intact, thank you very much - Kame had done an excellent repair job in it, which was only fair since he was the one responsible for breaking it in the first place - and he wasn't in the mood for dancing. He staggered far enough down the street that the crowds began to pick up again, and he could feel marginally safer as part of an anonymous herd.

A couple of hours later, and that herd would've made it near impossible to flag down one of the small, bright pink cabs, but it was early enough in the evening that most of the clubs weren't open yet and everyone was still working their way through the food and drink portion of the night. Jin hailed a cab with relative ease, and though the driver gave a him a dubious look - he was propped up against a streetlamp to ensure he remained upright and didn't fall in the road - they were soon on their way back to Cupid's Gate.

The backseat of the cab, intended for a cosy couple, was comfortably lined with fur and Jin was grateful to be able to collapse on something *soft*. Spending a couple of hours lying on the cold, hard ground hadn't done him any favours. The hot tub back in his hotel room was looking pretty good right now.

Despite his trembling hands, he took the opportunity to work his way through the text messages from Kame, beginning with the oldest, followed by the most recent. But that had been sent over thirty minutes ago, and Jin's inbox had given up the ghost after that. There was no indication that Kame was in any sort of trouble, at least - though from his recent eavesdropping session, Jin was firmly convinced otherwise - so he decided to call him.

The first word to come from Kame's end of the phone line was Jin's name, said in the tone of voice a starving man might use when faced with an all-you-can eat buffet. Jin's discomfort was temporarily elbowed aside by the delicious warmth that resulted.

The next words were of a more practical nature, though no less desperate. "Where are you? Are you hurt? Did you get my messages?"

"In a cab - I'll be back at the hotel soon. I haven't read all your messages yet but you can tell me what I missed when I get back."

Kame sighed audibly down the line. "Not much. Most of them were variations on 'where the hell are you, you idiot?' so you probably don't need to read those. Are you all right?"

Jin rubbed the back of his head with his free hand. "More or less. And you?"

"I'm okay now that I know you're safe," Kame assured him. "I'll be waiting in the room."

They exchanged a few meaningless pleasantries - there was only so much Jin could say in a cab with the driver hanging attentively on every word - and hung up, leaving him to send quick messages to his other friends to assure them that he was fine.

Before long, Jin found himself walking back through the lobby, trying hard to ignore the cherub statues. He didn't need another dose of paranoia. When he reached the haven of Room 369, Kame met him at the door, looked him over cautiously, then enfolded him in his arms.

Jin had no objection whatsoever to this. He sagged gratefully against his partner, soaking up affection like a sponge as they stood in the doorway. Kame kicked the door closed and locked it with the hand that wasn't currently resting at the nape of Jin's neck.

"You're not supposed to run off and get into trouble by yourself." Kame's chastisement, whispered in Jin's ear, was tinged with panic.

But then, Kame hadn't been alone for two years...not until Jin and the rest of the KAT-TUN crew had fallen under the hypnotic influence of a killer space station. It wasn't unexpected for him to worry.

"At least you knew where I was," he continued. "But when I got back to the table you'd disappeared and you weren't answering your phone and-"

Jin squeezed him tighter. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But I need to talk to you."

Kame untangled himself before Jin could crack his ribs. "Still fancy that hot tub?"

\-----

Ten minutes later, both men were sprawled on the floor of their enormous bathroom, protected from the cold tile by warm, fluffy towels, as they waited for the tub to fill up. It was a long, noisy process - which was precisely why Kame had suggested it. The fall of water muffled their voices and minimised the risk of them being overheard.

He didn't think it was likely their hotel room was bugged, but he'd had Jin check it out anyway. The other captain was notorious for hiding listening devices all over the ship, apparently for the innocuous purpose of recording the results of his crew's tendency to burst into song at random moments. To be fair, he'd cut back a lot after Yamapi had played him a few secret recordings of his own.

At any rate, they couldn't have smuggled any countersurveillance tools passed the Eros City security, so checking manually was their only option.

Jin hadn't found anything: nevertheless, Kame felt he was justified in being at least a little paranoid. It was far from being the only day in his life when someone had tried to kill him - but it was the first time on a planet better known for love than war.

Better safe than sorry: they'd kept their guns concealed while disrobing, also, and these were carefully hidden within easy reach under the towel rack.

"You really think someone's going to try to kill us when we're in the bath?" Jin murmured.

Kame shrugged. "Why not? It's the perfect time to do it. But no, I don't think we're likely to be attacked here. The cheap motel down the street, maybe, but not here. It'd cost too much to get the blood out of these carpets."

Jin resisted the urge to point out that there was no carpet in the bathroom, and contented himself with pouring ridiculously expensive bath foam (paid for by the military) into the fast-flowing water. Kame jogged his elbow just as he was about to replace the cap on the bottle, causing him to spill even more of the strawberry-scented liquid into the tub.

"We'll have bubbles up to the ceiling now!"

Kame flashed Jin an impish grin - and a lot of leg. "I know!"

He fished around in his toiletries bag, emerging with an extensive collection of ties, bands and clips, and tied first his own hair then Jin's up in an odd bun arrangement. Sure, it made them look like a couple of glamour girls getting ready for a night on the town instead of a couple of hardbitten JE Fleet captains, but it wasn't as if there was anyone around to see.

Unless there really were cameras, of course. But living with the Fahngarlians and suffering the indignity of having his legs shaved for half a year had put paid to any lingering shame Kame might have possessed.

He dropped back to the floor to curl up next to Jin while they waited for the bath to fill. "So? Where did you go?"

Jin shook his head. "You first."

"Fine. But when I got back to the table, the waiter had a go at me for not leaving a tip and two old women told me you'd gotten fed up with my pointless acts of self-sacrifice and insensitive bouts of jealousy and left me for some girl you'd suddenly started stalking. So your story had better be good."

"The story's good but the ending's terrible."

"Mine goes the other way round." Kame dipped his toes experimentally in the mountain of foam that was starting to rise from the water. "I made it up to the staffroom, which was empty, and "borrowed" some chef's whites - including hat - from the locker of some guy named 'Bambi'."

Jin made a shadow-puppet of a deer.

"Not that guy. I'm pretty sure they don't allow creatures from a thousand year-old Disney movie to work in restaurants.

"Anyway, I ran into a couple of people after that but nobody gave me a second look. Well, there was this one sleazy server who tried to hit on me-" Kame hurriedly closed the book on that sentence, "but...uh...I assumed that they'd be very busy this week and not really have time to pay attention to anyone, especially if they had to take on temporary staff for the occasion. I was wearing the right colours, so nobody noticed that I didn't belong."

"You don't even look Italian!"

"Neither do most Venusians. I don't think they were hiring based on ethnicity. Besides, nothing wrong with a Japanese chef working in an Italian restaurant."

"On Venus."

"On Venus," Kame said resignedly. They were never going to finish before he had to turn the taps off, at this rate. "I spent a lot of time digging around upstairs: evidently, some of the staff live there because I found a couple of bedrooms at the back. One of them had a rolled-up futon and a travel bag - nothing incriminating in itself, but the bag still had its luggage label on from the point of departure: Tokyo Central Spaceport. Shuttle flight number matches up with the one Yamapi gave us."

"Did you search the bag?"

"Obviously," Kame scorned. "But not then. I was just looking at the label when I heard voices outside the door, so I hid under the bed."

"In whites?"

Kame had the decency to look faintly guilty. "More like 'off-whites' now. I didn't exactly have time to stop and do laundry, did I?

"I had to wait twenty minutes under the bed while these two guys came in to get changed. I could be wrong but I think one of them left in a tutu. Unfortunately they didn't have anything interesting to say, not until one queried the futon and the other said it was there for Maki, then made an offhand comment about Japanese houseguests."

"Maki?"

"Maybe it's our girl's real name...or just another alias, I don't know. When the guys left I checked her bag, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Clothes, brush, toiletries - nothing with her name on it. However..."

Kame paused to check the temperature of the water and adjust the taps accordingly, provoking an impatient whine from Jin.

"Wait a minute: I have to show you something." Kame crawled across to the pile of clothing under the towel rack, which in addition to holding their guns also concealed his personal data pad. The casing was plastic, so it was safe enough to have in the bathroom. "Take a look at this."

He unlocked the photo album - the pad had a camera function, so Kame liked to keep it on him in case he suddenly got the urge to capture the moment - and flipped through to the latest. He stuck the pad under Jin's nose.

"Here. This is a picture of the photograph I found in the bag. It was kept in an envelope, wrapped inside a shirt. Any of these people look familiar to you?"

Jin forgot to breathe for a second. The central figure in the photograph was immediately recognisable to both of them, though Jin had been the one following her to the Heartbreak Club.

To her left was a man he'd never seen before - Japanese, and solidly built, with thick dark hair and wary eyes.

To her right was someone else he'd seen that afternoon - Ikuta Toma.

"Never seen the guy on the left," Jin said slowly. "But the one on the right...I know him. Or I did, a decade ago. Ikuta Toma, used to work for old man Kitagawa just like me and Pi. I don't know what he does now, though."

"Are you sure he's still alive?"

Jin nodded emphatically. "Positive, or I saw a ghost this afternoon."

And he was certain Toma hadn't been a ghost. He'd have noticed, being quite sensitive to these things. So sensitive, in fact, that he'd once run screaming out of a haunted house when, as teenagers, he and Yamapi had been sent to pull a job in one of those retro theme-parks. Pi hadn't stopped laughing for days.

That caught Kame's attention in a serious way. "Tell me."

Jin pointed at the tower of bubbles, which was threatening to topple over and swamp them both. "I think we need to stop the water now."

Grudgingly, Kame leaned over and turned off the taps. To compensate for the sudden loss of covering noise, he hit the button for the hotel's own radio station, which - perhaps not unexpectedly - played nothing but love songs.

Bad love songs.

Jin groaned, slid into the water, and contemplated ducking his head under to avoid the sap-laden caterwauling.

"Don't even think about it. You are not going to drown yourself and leave me alone to suffer through," Kame checked the screen on the wall, "the Greatest Hits of the Eurovision Song Contest."

He climbed down into the tub to sit beside Jin, causing one of the bubble towers to collapse. Thanks to the jets, the bath seemed more foam than water, and the heat and gentle pressure felt soothing against his skin. It was easy to sink in, to relax and let his troubles be washed away, but Kame knew they had work to do.

Well, that's what his *brain* knew. The rest of his body wasn't so sure. It liked being next to Jin, joined where their skin met, and it had other ideas about what they needed to do next.

Kame picked up a mound of bubbles and washed one slippery hand across Jin's shoulders, curling his fingers inwards to turn the other man to face him. Was it his imagination, or was there hesitation in Jin's movement, a barely detectable lag as he followed Kame's guiding caress?

He dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. "You know," he murmured, pressing his lips close to Jin's ear, "even if there *are* cameras in here, there's so much foam we could be hiding the entire crew in the tub and no one would ever notice."

There was a slight ripple in the water as Jin kicked out in the bath, as Kame knew he would, just to check that there really wasn't anyone buried under the snowy layer of bubbles.

An amused smile playing about his lips, Kame stilled Jin's legs, lungs, and everything else by climbing into his lap, straddling him. It wasn't entirely comfortable - the steps in the tub meant that his knees were pressed in an awkward position against the edge - but by doing so, he provided cover for his partner, shielding him from any unseen cameras.

Jin let out a shuddering breath and allowed his forehead to meet Kame's where the other man leaned forward.

"Tell me," Kame whispered, wrapping his arms around Jin's neck to keep himself seated. "Tell me what happened this afternoon."

Water swished and swirled between them: both men were drowning in the scent of strawberries, sweetly delicious and spread by the steam to trickle down the mirror's glass. Foam pushed its way into the narrow crevice that was all that separated their bodies, making their chests slick and slippery.

But Kame's proximity wasn't having its usual effect upon Jin - on the contrary, it seemed to be making him withdraw, retreat into himself as though he would hide away, and that worried Kame.

For Jin's part, he was in two minds about what to tell his partner. Because if what he'd heard at the club meant what he thought it might, things were only going to get worse for them - especially for Kame.

Kame's solution to the little problem he'd encountered was to touch his lips to Jin's, alternating his questions with the lightest of kisses, a brush of friendly encouragement. It didn't help. Jin placed one hand on Kame's chest and nudged him gently away.

"No?" Kame asked, his voice soft. He wasn't offended, merely curious. Between the heat generated by their position and the temperature of the room, Jin should've been flushed, or at least of healthy colour.

But he was pale, something Kame had overlooked till now.

"Sorry." Jin's tone was weary and worn as his skin. "How about I skip right to my story's terrible ending and tell you about how I wound up stunned outside a nightclub?"

Kame withdrew, but only as far as the length of his arms, which were still clasped behind Jin's neck. "Stunned?" he repeated.

"Yeah. It's kind of a passion killer. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault." Kame blinked. "Actually, maybe it is. What were you doing outside a nightclub?"

Jin squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and launched into a detailed description of everything that had happened since Kame had left their table. (Including the entire conversation with the two elderly ladies.) He wasn't sure he remembered everything, though. Getting stunned didn't do much for his short-term memory.

Kame's emotions ran the gamut from amused right through to horrified. Finally, he said, "Poor Ueda. I guess that confirms it: they were aiming for me and shot him by mistake. I wish I hadn't lent him my hair dye..."

He sounded so disconsolate that Jin forced himself to loosen up enough to place his hands high on Kame's back and gently urge him forwards.

Kame buried his face in the crook of Jin's neck and held still, just breathing in the heady combination of strawberry, Jin's natural musk...and the sickly sweet tang that had 'stunner' written all over it.

"You couldn't have known," Jin comforted him. "No one could've. But they're not likely to mistake the two of you again - I think Ueda will be okay." He closed his eyes. The next part was going to be difficult. "Worry about yourself instead."

"It's not like it's the first time someone's tried to kill me, Jin."

Jin's eyes flew open. "No, but this is the first time I'm worried about them succeeding!"

There wasn't anything Kame could say or do to assure Jin that he wasn't going to get himself killed before Sunday. He wasn't, to be honest, entirely certain of his continued survival himself. For all his earlier bravado about how unlikely it was that an assassination attempt would take place inside their hotel, Kame was forced to consider that given the time constraints, his pursuers might well be desperate enough to risk attacking him in a slightly more secure location than an open square.

But a problem shared was a problem halved, and since Jin wasn't going anywhere without him, Kame could allow himself to at least try to be positive.

"We need to get inside that club," he stated. "If they're using it as a base of operations - wait, do they know you're with me?"

Jin gave him a disbelieving look. "How am I supposed to know?"

Kame ignored him. "Forget I said that: if they'd known, they'd hardly have left you just lying on the ground. They'd have used you against me. *I'd* have used you against me."

"So they stunned me because I was hanging around the club when it wasn't open. How is that good customer service?"

"You were lurking suspiciously," Kame pointed out. "I don't think they were worried about losing your custom, so much as any electronic equipment or cash."

Jin sulked, but to be fair, he couldn't deny the implications.

"What I'm trying to figure out is: have they moved on? Because if they don't associate you with me, they have no reason to do so, and we can go check out the club."

"Definitely not." Jin didn't usually try to enforce his will upon anyone, even in his capacity as captain, but this time he was determined that Kame was going to listen to him. "What we should be doing is going to the station, contacting Yamapi as soon as he arrives and getting ourselves the hell off this planet before anyone realises you're gone!"

"Aren't you forgetting something? The reason we came here in the first place." Kame finally yielded to the demands of his knees, and removed himself from Jin's lap, resuming his seat beside him. "At least we know the photograph's still here."

"I don't think that has anything to do with it at all," Jin said darkly. "They're using it as bait for you, Kame. Toma made that pretty clear."

"It's a good choice of bait if they want to get to me," Kame mused. "The retrieval mission is one that Admiral Takki can only entrust to a very short list of people, and the timing's convenient - we're supposed to be on leave. Everyone knows we were going to Earth-"

"-Where we'd be followed at a "discreet" distance by security the entire time," Jin finished for him. "They've got you here, supposedly without backup and unarmed, and they've obviously got a weapons stash."

"Except that we're not alone, and we're not unarmed." Kame's brow furrowed in concentration. "I don't think Yamapi gave us the full story."

"He wasn't lying," Jin offered. "I can tell."

"I'm sure he told us all he knew." Kame seized Jin's hand as his thought processes grew more frenzied, light dawning on him with sickening, feverish reality. "But not all Admiral Takizawa and Earth President Tsubasa know. I think they're well aware there's a lot more to this than a stolen photograph. That's why we got the cryptic message, and those little gizmos from Arashi.

"I think we're being used, Jin."

"To do what?"

Kame shook his head. "I don't know - yet. But we're going to find out. If people are trying to kill me, I'd at least like to know why!"


	5. Chapter 5

"I still don't think you should be here," Taguchi tried again. He didn't really expect to succeed, but at least if Ueda suddenly collapsed, no one could accuse him of not trying to talk his injured friend out of going clubbing.

Ueda's response hadn't changed since Taguchi's first protest, a good twenty minutes ago, when the blond man had objected to him hailing a cab and insisting on joining in the night's activities. "I'm not going to sit around in our inn, nice though it is, when I could be...dancing." With the cab driver present, he couldn't mention their mission, so he'd been forced to substitute various alternative verbs.

"But Koki and Nakamaru are already going - shouldn't we be on standby or something?"

Taguchi's idea of 'standby' meant playing guard dog to his captains while improving his virtual golf handicap.

"They'll be fine. *All* of them," Ueda stated.

Having made an escape from the Eros City Emergency Room, he'd been spending a quiet evening in the inn, under instructions to rest and let his body recover from the trauma. Ueda hadn't bothered informing his well-intentioned doctor that his body was perfectly used to taking damage - one didn't become the number one boxer in the entire JE Fleet by shying away from pain, after all - but it irritated him, just a little, that Taguchi would try to insist that he remain in their room.

As if he could wait around after the phone call he'd received from Jin.

"Anyway, it's not like the shot will slow me down - much. It's just a flesh wound." Ueda's full, sensuous lips parted in a gleeful grin. "I've always wanted to say that!"

Taguchi returned the smile a trifle uneasily. "I think they just meant for Koki and Nakamaru to go."

"And *I* think we're supposed to do whatever we think is best. If the guy who shot me's still in the club, I want to find him."

"And if he finds it weird that the guy he shot earlier is going to a nightclub? It's not like he'll have forgotten your face since this afternoon."

Ueda paid the driver - as the senior member of the team, he had control of their finances - and stepped gracefully from the cab. "Therapy," he told Taguchi firmly. "Anyway, it'll be dark in there, and I'll be wearing these."

He donned a pair of black-rimmed glasses, so powerful they allowed him to spot the near-swoon they caused in a girl halfway down the street, and even the driver peeked at him surreptitiously before driving off again.

Taguchi wasn't completely convinced, but a glasses-wearing Ueda was a force to be reckoned with - even more so than usual - and as the commander had proven earlier, being scraped by a bullet in no way impeded his aim...or the power of his fists.

Assuming nobody blew up the entire club, they were probably safe. And really, what were the odds of that happening? Worse than those of Kame winning the Neo-Turner Art Prize.

"You're probably right," he agreed, glancing quickly at his phone to doublecheck their quarry. Kame had mailed them both a picture, apparently a copy of one he'd taken with his datapad, that was, itself, of a photograph. The woman's face, they already knew, and Jin had positively identified the light-haired man as Ikuta Toma. The dark-haired man, nobody had a clue about. They were on the lookout for all three.

For now, they didn't have much to go on. Jin was the only one of the KAT-TUN command crew who'd ever had any dealings with Ikuta, back when he and Yamapi both worked for old man Kitagawa, and they hadn't seen each other in over a decade. All he'd been able to tell them was that Ikuta was - or had been - a pretty nice guy, and funny too, but deadly competent. That notwithstanding, the old man had kept him on a short leash, not letting him loose on anything major, and he'd had a hard time concealing his frustration.

With no way of accessing information from outside Eros City, they couldn't get anything more up-to-date on Ikuta, and it wasn't likely they'd be able to turn up anything locally.

"Can't we go to the station and try to contact the commodore for details?" Taguchi had asked, and Ueda had pointed out the futility of that idea: the Pin wasn't due to land at Eros City spaceport until tomorrow.

They were on their own.

\-----

"Didn't Kame say on the phone that this was supposed to be a nightclub?" Nakamaru murmured to Koki as the two of them were shown to a small, round table near the stage. "Looks more like a jazz club."

Koki took in the wailing saxaphone, the artificially-generated smoky atmosphere and the low-cut-but-high-class dame singing her heart out on the piano, and wished he was wearing a fedora instead of a hood.

"Everyone in this place looks suspicious," he complained after they'd sat down with drinks. "Including us."

"Especially us," Nakamaru corrected him. "We're the only ones not trying to look down the singer's dress."

Koki grinned. "Everyone else is here with a broken heart, or so the sign outside says. Nothing wrong with mine."

Nakamaru clinked glasses with him and laughed. "Mine's in good condition too."

The Heartbreak Club wasn't a bad place to spend an evening, if you were looking to drown your sorrows in soulful jazz and imported Earth wines. You could lose yourself in the eyes and arms of a complete stranger, maybe the sad-eyed girl sitting next to you, or the man across the room who's been watching you since you walked in. You didn't have to care.

And if that was all you wanted, one quick roll in the hay to get it out of your system - or perhaps a slow, lazy lay in a bed of feathers - then there were rooms for that. The club catered for all kinds.

It didn't take long for the two KAT-TUN crew members to figure this out, not once they saw couples being shown out back by the staff, and money changing hands.

"Easiest way to check the rest of the club without arousing suspicion," Koki said, and Nakamaru agreed with him.

There was no sign of Ikuta or the girl in the lounge, and the men's room had been empty as well. With the aid of a long blonde wig and a pair of high heels, Koki had infiltrated the ladies' room and emerged looking totally stupefied. It had taken Nakamaru five minutes to get any sense out of him.

"How much do you think they charge?" Koki wondered.

Nakamaru finished his drink and waved the empty glass offhandedly. "Probably too much. I don't think you have to leave a tip, though."

"I could leave them a tip on how-" Koki stopped midsentence as his rented cellphone buzzed in his pocket, making him jump. He didn't like it much. Datbands made much cooler-looking personal communication accessories, and when they were on the KAT-TUN, all they needed was their comm badges.

"Message from Kame?" Nakamaru guessed.

"Taguchi. He's here with Ueda. They're outside."

Nakamaru groaned. "Shouldn't he be taking it easy?"

"You know how hardworking Taguchi is."

"I meant Ueda."

After the shooting, they'd gone over to help Ueda, not thinking that it might be better to keep their distance. They'd gone with the medics, but left after seeing Ueda safely delivered to the emergency room, and despite their best efforts, they hadn't managed to catch up with Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi.

If they had, perhaps Jin wouldn't have got himself stunned.

"If Ueda says he's okay, he's okay."

"Or he's lying to make us all feel better," Nakamaru pointed out. "You know how good he is at that."

"I know *I* feel better with them both here." Koki began to jab away frantically at his phone's keypad. "I'm telling them to split up and cover the front and rear doors. Shame we don't have any trainees with us."

"They'd all be traumatised for life in here," Nakamaru assured him. "Complete waste of money."

Koki flipped his phone shut, not bothering to wait for confirmation. "Okay, let's go. That waitress is giving us strange looks."

"She probably thinks you're here to rob the place. Better look lovingly into my eyes for a minute and convince them we're legit."

Twenty seconds later, both of them were biting their lips to keep from laughing out loud. The effort required to maintain a straight face was enormous.

Nakamaru swallowed his laughter with difficulty. "What part of 'lovingly' involves pulling faces at me?" he gasped.

"Don't talk like you weren't doing the same thing," Koki retorted, and the two of them shared a grin that was entirely too happy for their surroundings before making their way to the back of the lounge.

Nakamaru was right about the price.

\-----

When they got the message, Ueda was sorely tempted to pull rank on Koki. But that would be unforgivable, because the KAT-TUN crew just didn't do that to each other - except on the odd occasions when Jin attempted to commandeer the last slice of cake for himself, anyway - and really, he didn't have any cause for complaint. The weather was fairly mild, and the only reason he was even wearing a jacket with a fur-trimmed hood was to conceal his air gun.

(Because it looked good, as well, but that went without saying.)

So waiting outside the club in case anyone made a break for it wasn't a completely unappealing prospect, particularly since Ueda got the choice of location.

"Front or back?" Taguchi asked.

"I'll take- are those girls waving at us?"

"That's not an option," Taguchi replied automatically, but looked round anyway to discover that Ueda was right. A trio of flashy-looking Venusian girls were approaching them. He returned the wave in his usual cheerful style.

Ueda elbowed him with his good arm. "You're supposed to be with me, remember?"

"Yeah, but don't you think this hair makes me look like the playboy type?"

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, the same one he always got when Jin told him no, of course it won't be dangerous, Ueda waited for the girls to catch up to them. One day, Taguchi's exuberant, outgoing nature was going to get them all into trouble, and Ueda just hoped it wasn't going to be *that* day.

Not that the girls seemed to be armed, or anything. It wasn't like they had anywhere to stash a weapon.

"Please don't think we're being rude," the one in front began, "but we've been standing over there for five minutes trying to figure out where you're from."

She was addressing Taguchi, and all three girls were staring at his hair.

Ueda buried his amusement in the fur of his hood.

"We're from Japan, Earth," Taguchi said, running a hand self-consciously through the bright blond strands. "You girls are locals?"

"That's right," the second one said, switching to Japanese. "I'm Athena, that's Artemis, and the little one is Aphrodite. Stage names, of course."

"Of course," Ueda murmured politely.

"What about you guys?" Aphrodite asked.

Taguchi launched into his usual introductory phrase: unfortunately, halfway through he remembered he was supposed to be incognito and tried to make amends. The results were mixed.

"Iriguchi...uh...taguchi deguchi desu!"

"Deguchi?" Athena repeated, wrinkling her pretty little nose. "Exit?"

Ueda stepped in before things could get any worse. "He means, 'DeGucci'. You know, the Italian fashion house that set up shop over on Jupiter a couple of years ago? He was adopted into the family as a baby, after his Japanese mother and Swedish father were killed in an accident. Please forgive him, his sense of humour is very bad."

His cellphone trilled before anyone had time to fully digest this explanation, and Ueda excused himself, retreating to the relative privacy of a streetlamp.

It was Kame.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" Ueda was puzzled. "What've you done?"

"I haven't done anything - except lend you some hair dye that almost got you killed because the shooter mistook you for me." Kame sounded unusually stressed. "I am so, so sorry."

Ueda didn't know what to say to cheer him up except, "It's not your fault."

The case of mistaken identity, true, was not Kame's fault. The fact that a good many people (most of them families and friends of those killed during the war with the Fahngarlians) would have reason to want Kame dead was indeed his fault. And that, they all knew, was something he was going to have to deal with now that he was no longer confined to the KAT-TUN.

"Look, Kame," Ueda tried again when it became obvious that the other man was determined to wallow in guilt on the other end of the line, "I can take a bullet for a friend, all right? It happened, and there's nothing either of us can do to change that, so stop apologising and let me get back to finding the person responsible."

"You're at the club?"

"Yeah. Koki and Nakamaru are inside: Taguchi and I are covering the exits. Will be covering the exits," he corrected himself, "just as soon as I can pry him away from three Greek goddesses."

"From what?"

"Never mind. I'll let you know what happens. Are you guys okay?"

Kame sighed. "Jin's trying to remember as much about Ikuta Toma as he can, but it's a very slow process. Being stunned isn't good for his brain cells. He's still pretty unsteady on his feet, too, so I don't really want to leave him by himself and sneak out to join you guys. I have visions of getting back to find he's accidentally cracked his head open on the furniture or something."

"We'll handle it," Ueda promised. "Just leave it to us."

By the time he cut the call, the girls had disappeared. Fortunately, Taguchi hadn't.

"You're taking the front," Ueda told him shortly, "and if anybody tries to talk to you, tell them you've taken a vow of silence."

The last thing Ueda heard as he crept round to the back of the club was Communications Officer Taguchi's incredulous protest that he didn't know sign language.

\-----

Inside the Heartbreak Club, things weren't progressing any better.

"At least the bed's soft?" Koki offered, trying to look on the bright side.

Nakamaru, who was peering through a crack in the door, remained unmoved by this. "I think the couples in the rooms either side of us are legitimate," he whispered. "Kind of strange, but legitimate. But the room opposite us hasn't opened the door at all, and nobody's been by to knock, either."

In the ten minutes since they'd been led through a series of beaded curtains and down a narrow hallway, they'd discovered that if they genuinely had been paying for privacy, they'd have been severely shortchanged. Club personnel frequented the hall, as it led to the staff-only section by the back door, and it wasn't uncommon for them to be called in at a customer's request.

Consequently, all snooping was on hold until such time as Koki and Nakamaru could make it out of their room unobserved.

"I think we're going to have to go for the 'staggering drunk' ploy," Nakamaru decided. "Mess yourself up a bit, look completely plastered, and stumble over to that door. I'll come chasing after you and pretend to try to bring you back. At least we'll know what's in there."

"Why do I have to play drunk?"

"Because I thought of it first," Nakamaru said smugly.

He helped Koki get himself into a state of artful disarray, ably assisted by a tube of hair gel and a compact of glittery eye shadow they'd found next to the bed, and pushed him out the door.

Suddenly adrift in the hallway, Koki fixed a stupid smile on his face and did his best to look utterly soused. It wasn't hard - he based his performance on Commodore Yamashita.

He waited until the hindquarters of one last waiter vanished into the sea of curtains before venturing a few stumbling steps, but ensuring he looked like he was trying to walk in a straight line and thus prove his sobriety. He'd just managed to get his fingers round the door handle and push down enough to check that the room definitely wasn't locked when the door opened from the inside.

Koki didn't recognise the man who stood in the doorway, wearing a pale green bathrobe. He did, however, recognise the familiar white handle of the stunner that protruded from the robe's bulging pocket.

Instinct took over and he dropped to the ground, sweeping a wide arc to kick the man's legs out from under him. Nakamaru, alarmed by the sudden movement, reached for his weapon but thought better of it when the door on his left began to creak open. He barged into the room, past Koki and the robed man, and backed the door closed.

For all his struggling, the man hadn't been able to find his feet again, not with Koki keeping him pinned. Koki didn't have Jin's weight or Ueda's speed when it came to a fight, but he consoled himself with the fact that he had infinitely more street cred.

"Who are you?" was the first thing Nakamaru demanded. With the door closed, he felt secure in drawing his gun, and that proved sufficient to quell the man's fighting spirit - if only physically.

"Who are *you*?" he spat furiously. "Military?" He looked doubtfully at their attire and Nakamaru's weapon and tried again. "Mercenaries? Circus clowns? Is this another one of my aunt's birthday surprises?"

Koki plucked the stunner from his pocket, then loomed over him and took a good, hard look at his face. It certainly wasn't Ikuta or the girl, but it wasn't the other man in the photograph either. Just how many people in Eros City were carrying weapons, anyway?

"It doesn't matter who we are," Nakamaru snapped back. "You're outnumbered and outgunned, and that's all you need to know."

"Are you *sure* my aunt didn't send you?"

While Nakamaru resisted the urge to shoot the guy just for being irritating, Koki checked out the room. The high-powered rifle, freshly-cleaned, packed neatly away in a box and stored in a hidden compartment in the end of the bed, proved to be an interesting find.

As was the ID card, in the name of 'Kazama Shunsuke'.

They knew better than to take the ID with them - the cards could be tracked, given the proper equipment - but Koki took a few pictures with his cellphone. He sent one to Jin, and seconds later, he received a frantic text message in response.

Kazama had worked with Ikuta under Kitagawa - along with another guy named Hasegawa Jun. They'd worked as a quartet with Yamapi, and then as a trio after Kitagawa had decided his talents were better employed elsewhere. Jin didn't know what had happened to them after he'd gone independent, though.

"You still working for Kitagawa?" Koki asked.

Surprise flickered across Kazama's face for a fraction of a second, before he went into lockdown and refused to let anything show. "I'm not working *for* anyone."

Nakamaru exchanged an anxious look with Koki. "It'll take all night to get answers out of him and we can't stay here."

"Then we'll make this quick. Where's the photograph?"

"Huh?" Kazama didn't hide his surprise nearly so well this time. "What photograph?"

"The one the girl was carrying around with her."

"Who, Maki?" Kazama shrugged, then flinched as Nakamaru's finger edged closer to the trigger. "If she's carrying a picture, I guess that's her business. I don't know anything about it."

"Where is she?" Nakamaru asked.

"Not here, obviously."

"With Ikuta?"

"Maybe. Could be they're out seeing the sights. There's a lot to see and do in Eros City, you know."

"I don't, but you'd know, wouldn't you? How long have you lived here, Kazama? Since before the killings three years ago? Is that why you and you pals have such a nice weapons stash, all things brought in from your days working from Kitagawa?"

Nakamaru wasn't sure which holovid actor Koki was copying but the sneer was really working for him.

"You obviously know all about me," Kazama sulked. "How about we skip the questions and get right to the part where HaseJun blows you both away?"

"Huh?" was all Nakamaru managed to get out before he felt the cold, hard circle of a blaster barrel against the back of his head.

"Put your weapon on the ground."

Slowly, Nakamaru lowered his gun, signalling frantically with his eyes to Koki not to make any sudden moves, because he really, really didn't think that having half his head blown off would do much for his looks. Koki signalled back not to worry.

They did, after all, have a couple of aces up their sleeves. Or rather, Koki's gun under his hooded sweatshirt, and Ueda and Taguchi waiting outside.

That didn't do much to stop the sweat beading uncomfortably round Nakamaru's neck and trickling down his spine. Seven years ago, he'd been in the same position: helpless, forced to give up his weapon...but the man holding the blaster had been Akanishi Jin.

"Good," Hasegawa said. "Now kneel. Sit on your hands. You too, baldy."

The appellation was somewhat unfair, as Koki's hair had been growing back at a startling rate since the last time he'd shaved his head, but he was in no position to argue. He backed up against the bed and knelt facing Hasegawa, waiting for the chance to slip a hand free to draw his gun. If only they'd heard Hasegawa open the door! But Koki had been so busy with his sneering speculation that he'd been completely oblivious.

Kazama regained his feet and picked up Nakamaru's gun, staring at it curiously. "What kind of weapon is this?" he wanted to know. "Where'd you get it?"

Hasegawa gave him a despairing look. "We don't have time for that! Toma's already mad at you for taking a shot at Kamenashi in public and coming back here, and there's another one of these guys waiting out front. We have to go before we start drawing attention from Security."

Koki figured it was Taguchi who'd been spotted. It wasn't such a surprise - not with hair bright enough to light up the entire Sol System if the sun ever had a power cut - and he thought Ueda would probably do a better job of keeping himself concealed.

"There's one out the front too? Did he notice you?" Kazama sounded worried.

"He was too busy trying to chat up a couple in sign language," Hasegawa assured him. "I saw him earlier with the guy you shot - and these two. They went to the hospital together."

Kazama scowled. "If you were in the square the whole time you could've helped me!"

"Helped you do what? Spoil everything? Because you were doing a great job by yourself, no need for me to step in."

While their captors were arguing, Koki began to edge one hand slowly round to his waistband and the gun hidden there.

Hasegawa shook his head in warning. "Don't even think about it. I don't want to shoot either of you, even if you *are* with Kamenashi, but move one more inch and I won't hesitate."

Koki swallowed hard and concentrated on keeping absolutely still. Hasegawa didn't seem like he was joking, and Nakamaru's head was first in the line of fire.

"I didn't spoil anything," Kazama sulked. "I lost Kamenashi at the station, found him later when he was out and about, and figured I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Nobody saw me take the shot, and I know no one followed me back here!"

Hasegawa indicated Koki and Nakamaru. "If no one followed you, then why are these guys in your bedroom?"

Kazama shrugged. "Don't know. Maki came by earlier, maybe they followed her? She hasn't been doing a very good job of keeping herself hidden since she landed."

The other man appeared to consider this for a moment. "Maybe. I stunned a guy out back earlier - I saw him sneaking around by the window when I arrived. He might've been following her. Who knows how many guys Kamenashi brought with him? Toma figured there'd probably only be a couple, but he's been wrong before."

"I didn't see anyone outside," Kazama said. "He's not still there, is he?"

"I hope not. I got him from behind, he sort of fell out of sight so I figured it was safe enough to leave him there to sleep it off. But I thought it was just a trespasser, so I didn't check him out."

Nakamaru sent up a silent prayer to whatever guardian angel Jin had keeping him safe that Hasegawa hadn't thought to take a closer look at his victim. If he'd gotten a glimpse of another one of Kitagawa's runaways, the next shot might have been from something more deadly than a stunner.

Koki was dying to know why these guys were so intent on killing Kame - though not so much that he'd actually consider dying for the answer. Could he ask? If he did, would they even bother to give him a reply?

The question died stillborn on his lips when Kazama, at his cohort's request, stuck his head round the door and called out for a couple of pairs of handcuffs. Evidently, the order was nothing unusual - a strangled female voice yelled back an affirmative and the clacking of her high heels grew louder, eventually stopping just outside.

"Shall I come in and put them on for you?"

Kazama's face darkened until it was roughly the same shade as a tomato, and he stammered out, "No, thank you."

He opened the door a crack, just enough to stick one hand through for the cuffs, and let out a squawk as one snicked closed round his wrist.

"Wha-"

The door opened the rest of the way to reveal a leggy blonde waitress, holding a pair of handcuffs in one hand and a gun in the other. She was beaming brightly at them...but then, one could almost say that was Taguchi's natural expression.

Nakamaru felt the blaster go slack against his head: Hasegawa was momentarily stunned by Taguchi's unexpected appearance, there was never going to be a better opportunity to free himself. He lunged to the side, elbowing the other man in the ribs and winding him enough to make him lose his grip on the gun.

A brief tussle ensued, fists, feet and firearms flying everywhere, and when the dust settled, Hasegawa was lying on the floor, oblivious to everything but the pain in his head. He'd been unlucky enough to get shot twice by Nakamaru's weapon, and thus had a headache the likes of which only attendees at Admiral Takki and President Tsubasa's wedding reception had previously experienced.

Koki was only prepared to take half the blame for it: in wresting Nakamaru's gun away from Kazama, both of them had been responsible for squeezing the trigger, and it was unfortunate for Hasegawa that he'd been in the way at the time.

Twice.

"He'll be incoherent for the rest of the night," Nakamaru complained. "Now what do we do with him?"

Taguchi, who was sitting on Kazama with his bestockinged legs daintily crossed at the knee, waved the other pair of handcuffs as a possible solution.

"I don't even want to know where you got that outfit."

"I saw him," Taguchi pointed to Hasegawa, "trying to check me out, and his jacket slipped open enough for me to see the gun. Security don't carry concealed, so I knew he was up to no good. Followed him in, borrowed the outfit so I could get into the back rooms, and it's just lucky I overheard the conversation and came in time to save you guys."

"And the handcuffs?"

"Oh, I found those in the skirt pocket. These outfits are practical as well as cute."

Koki took the cuffs, ensured both men were secured at the wrists, and puzzled over what to do next. "You think if we carry them out to a cab, make like they're drunk, we can get away with stashing them back in our hotel room?"

"Worth a try - at least for tonight. We can't let them run around loose." As an afterthought, Nakamaru added, "And in *our* hotel, no one will notice. Someone should stay, though, in case Ikuta and the girl come back."

"They won't." Kazama's voice was muffled, since he was facedown on the floor, but the scorn came through loud and clear. "They'll know the club is compromised by now. Toma will make sure nobody comes here."

"Nobody? How many of you guys are there?" Koki wanted to know.

"Enough to accomplish our mission."

The three KAT-TUN crew members exchanged glances. "Since when has killing Kame been anyone's mission?" Nakamaru asked.

"Since that cold-blooded sadist wiped out Titan Colony," Kazama snarled; no matter how much they questioned him, he refused to say anything further.

Koki shot Kazama with his own stunner, using the lightest setting to keep him dazed long enough to get him safely to the hotel, while Taguchi filled Ueda in and hailed a cab. He didn't have much trouble - the maid's outfit had a very short skirt and Venusian cabbies were partial to blondes - though he did get some strange looks when he helped carry two semi-conscious men (one wearing a bathrobe, one moaning in pain, and both in handcuffs) from the club.

"Rough night?" the driver asked, and Nakamaru shrugged and gave him a 'what can you do?' look. Clearly, none of them were going to make it out of Eros City with their dignity intact, and it didn't provide the slightest bit of consolation that the commodore wasn't there to witness any of it.

Back at Koki and Nakamaru's hotel, the task of telling their captains the news was left to Nakamaru and as he was the slowest to come up with an excuse, he couldn't refuse. While the others tried to bring Kazama round for further questioning, he phoned what was currently passing for the KAT-TUN's bridge: the hot tub in Room 369, Cupid's Gate hotel.

"We're out of the bath, all right?" Kame said testily when Nakamaru enquired if perhaps he should phone back when they were less waterlogged. "Jin started falling asleep in there."

"Then why can I still hear running water?"

"He's watching a holovid documentary about Niagara Falls to keep himself awake." Kame lowered his voice. "And to cover any sensitive conversations we might have. We didn't find any bugs, but..."

"I don't think these guys know where you're staying. One of them followed you from the station but lost you before you got to the hotel, didn't pick up your trail till later." Nakamaru declined to mention that Kazama had been responsible for shooting Ueda as well.

"This is going to be a long story, isn't it?"

"I hope your bed's more comfortable than mine..."

It took a while to fill Kame in on the details, and longer to deal with Jin's interruptions, but everything went smoothly until Nakamaru reached Kazama's final words.

"They want to kill you as revenge for Titan Colony," he said as gently as he could.

The line went dead.


	6. Chapter 6

"What did you hang up for?"

Kame ignored Jin's poking him in the ribs and snapped his cellphone shut. "Do you have any chocolate?"

"Huh? Don't try to distract me with food, I know what you're up to."

"I was hoping you'd distract *me* with food." Kame found the roomservice menu, flipped through till he found the most sickening chocolate dessert known to mankind, and placed an order for half a dozen.

Jin frowned. "Please tell me those aren't all for you."

"You want one as well?" Kame shouldn't have been surprised. "I'd better order another couple."

Jin stopped him before he could key in any more. "I don't think binge-eating is going to help with whatever it is. What did Nakamaru say to you before you cut him off?"

Kame's phone rang again: he snarled and switched it off altogether. "Forget it."

"I'd like to but someone's trying to kill you, so that's just not going to happen." Jin squashed himself in between Kame and the pillows so he could try to massage some of the tension out of his partner's shoulders. "I could nag you till your desserts arrive, I could give Nakamaru a call and find out for myself, or you could save us all the trouble and just tell me."

Jin's fingers felt good through the barely-there barrier of Kame's thin T-shirt, working out the knots with more care than finesse. Kame wished himself a million light-years away from his life, to a whole new universe - one where he hadn't tried to wipe out his own species - but if he ever made it there, he wanted Jin to be at his side. Always.

"About that photograph," he began.

"Which one? The one we're supposed to find?"

Kame shook his head; Jin's fingers slipped and nails dug into the skin of his neck. "The one Maki had in her bag, the one I took a picture of."

"You know who the other guy in the picture is now?"

"No, but I think I know where it was taken. I thought the park background looked familiar, and now I know why." Kame drew his knees up to his chest and leaned forward, resisting Jin's attempts to pull him back. "That bench behind them looks like a thousand others, but the only one I ever carved my initials into was on Titan Colony."

As soon as Kame said the name, the tension flooded back into his muscles to undo Jin's hard work. Undeterred, Jin kept going, maintaining a steady pace as he tried to will Kame to relax.

"You carved your initials into a bench?"

"I was a bored ten-year-old on holiday." Kame pulled out his datapad and showed Jin the photo again, zooming in on the bench. "My older brothers were doing it, so I had to join in. Bled all over the bench 'cause I cut myself with a penknife. The blood's gone now, of course."

Sure enough, etched with thick, deep lines into the back of the bench was a child's messy 'K.K.', drawn on...

"What is that, a cricket ball?" Jin asked.

Kame turned round to glare at him, angst temporarily forgotten. "It's a baseball!"

Jin smiled weakly. "Of course it is. I knew that." Clearly, Kame's artistic talents hadn't improved much in the last sixteen years. "So they were on Titan Colony. What's the significance?"

Kame felt sick even thinking about it. He'd heard reports afterwards, of course - the Fahngarlians had been ecstatic about their victory, and at the time, he'd been able to take a cold sort of pleasure in it. They'd asked him how he'd destroy an entire colony of people in one fell swoop and he, thinking they were playing their war games, had laughingly suggested contaminating their water supply.

With hair dye.

Titan Colony hadn't been big - less than a million people - and the moon itself hadn't exactly been one of the more popular residential areas of the Sol System. Mostly it was inhabited by hermit types, people who wanted out of the hassle of mainstream life. Kame's family had spent three weeks there, with the kids bored out of their minds while their mother embraced a short-lived love of meditation.

Life in a terraformed dome wasn't for everyone, especially someone who'd been born on Earth and knew how it felt to have real breeze waft across his face. Kame hadn't liked the colony, but he hadn't wanted to destroy it, either...not until a combination of excess testosterone and bitter, twisted jealousy had convinced him that yes, the wretched humans living on Titan deserved everything they got.

The colonists had derived every drop of their water from beneath the layers of rock and ice. After filtering to remove the ammonia, it had been pumped into every corner of the dome, with as much recycled as possible. Thanks to Kame's suggestion, the Fahngarlians infiltrated the filtration plant and used their entire stock of red hair dye (aside from a few bottles Kame had secreted for himself) to contaminate the whole system.

To compensate for the fact that nobody was likely to drink pale red water, they'd infiltrated Dome Maintenance at the same time and changed the settings for all the lights to 'crimson', accompanying it with an announcement, supposedly from the governor of Titan, to warn people that they shouldn't panic and that it was only a temporary problem.

When a supply ship arrived from Saturn a few weeks later, the crew couldn't separate out the water from the blood. There was no one left alive to tell them the difference.

And it was all Kame's fault because damnit, he'd known by then that the Fahngarlians weren't playing games, no matter how much he'd liked to pretend otherwise.

"The significance, Jin, is that I'm responsible for wiping out the entire colony." Kame heaved a sigh. "Nakamaru told me that's why these guys want me dead. They must've known someone there - maybe the third person in the photo? I never looked at the obituaries."

"But Toma didn't- no, wait, he did," Jin corrected himself. "I remember now. He had a friend on Titan, used to go visit him sometimes. Oguri something. Old man Kitagawa didn't like him going so far out - I don't think he trusted him more than a couple of microparsecs away from Earth, like Toma might turn around and quit if he got a little taste of freedom."

"Obviously, he did," Kame pointed out. "So did you. And Yamapi."

"Yeah, but Yamapi left 'cause he was hoping to run into Captain Takizawa again, and he wanted to make a better impression than 'stupid kid with a love of bright pink ships who hangs around orbital museums'."

Kame was tactful enough not to talk about Jin's own reasons for leaving Kitagawa, but he hadn't heard Yamapi's before. " _That's_ why he left Earth? Because of his crush on the admiral?"

"He was only a captain back then."

Jin cracked a grin at the memory. He'd been seventeen, sharing a pink-and-black bedroom with his best friend, sixteen year-old Yamashita Tomohisa: both of them living in a house owned by Kitagawa and running all manner of illegal errands. They were underage - they weren't supposed to fly yet, though they'd both been taught, and the old man hadn't used them on anything they could be put to death for. They hadn't killed anybody, they hadn't done any irreparable damage to anyone or anything, and they'd never been caught.

"We met him when we were at this orbital museum round Mars, had all these old spaceships on display?" he explained to Kame. "We were supposed to be there on a school assignment, that was our cover, but we actually had to steal a model from the curator's office. Takki was giving some sort of lecture when we got there, talking about the ships they were using in the military at the time, and we fell in with his crowd for a while.

"We were interested, so we asked a lot of questions - some of which were really, really stupid - and he answered every last one. He was just so nice to everyone - sure, he teased a bit, but we thought he was a great guy. I went to the bathroom when the crowd was clearing out, and when I got back, Pi was talking to him about ship colours, of all things."

"That doesn't surprise me," Kame interjected.

"He'd always wanted his own ship, something in pink - but obviously he wasn't going to tell Takki exactly how he planned to afford it! Kitagawa wouldn't have let us fly anything so conspicuous, even when we were older, and it didn't occur to Pi that if he wanted to spend more time with the captain, he could've joined the military. We didn't have anything serious on our records at the time, it wouldn't have been a problem, and he *was* old enough.

"We ran into Takki a few times again after that, mostly on Earth, and he was always nice to us. He introduced us to Tsubasa then, too - that was before he was elected Earth President, he was only ruling Japan at the time, but it was still really impressive!"

"So why did Yamapi take up smuggling?" Kame asked.

"Apparently, it was all part of his plan to a) get more money by being independent, which didn't work out because he hooked up with these two brothers, Golf and Mike, and they worked as a trio for a while, and b) make Takki interested in pursuing him."

"As a felon?"

Jin shrugged. "I think he had some sort of vision of making a glorious final stand on a deserted moon, and then being dragged off in handcuffs. I usually understand the way his mind works, but I think only one of us was drunk when he came up with that idea and I'm pretty sure it wasn't me."

Kame's desserts arrived at that point, diverting his attention from Jin's story, and he reluctantly agreed to share them. Both men being fairly enthusiastic eaters, it didn't take them long to make significant inroads in the enormous dishes.

"You think Yamapi's seen Toma since then?" Kame enquired through a mouthful of chocolate.

Jin lapped the whipped cream from his spoon as he considered this. The utensil felt heavy in his hand - the stun hadn't done wonders for either his energy levels or his coordination, and he had to concentrate hard on not spilling all down himself. "I doubt it. He'd have told me if he'd been in touch with anyone from the old days."

"So trying to contact him for information won't help. Fine." Kame set aside the second dish and started work on the third. "I don't think we're going to find the death roll for Titan Colony all the way over here."

Gorging himself on pudding so rich even Yamapi would've turned it down was starting to help a little, and if it didn't do wonders for his figure, well, Kame figured the stress would burn it off soon enough. And if that failed, there was always pole-dancing. Jin was usually an appreciative audience.

"Oguri Shun!" Jin snapped his fingers in triumph at having remembered. "That was his name! If he was still living there when you...um..." He took a huge bite of chocolate chip brownie to avoid having to finish his sentence.

"Fine, I get it." Kame pushed his tray aside, no longer in the mood for pudding. One name represented the thousands, millions of corpses that could be laid at his feet. Without names, victims didn't have faces, didn't have identities...didn't have lives. But once they had names, they were people. Dead people. Kame's stomach churned miserably.

Jin cast a sideways glance at him and discreetly set down his own spoon. Clearly, the time for eating had come to an end. And he'd been fed so well since coming to Venus, too.

It wasn't as if he could change the subject. They needed to figure out what to do next, and if Kame allowed himself to wrap up snugly in a black cloak of guilt, they'd never get anywhere. All Jin could do was be there for his partner, make sure Kame knew that no matter what he did, there was one person who would always forgive him.

"You weren't in your right mind," he said gently. "You couldn't have done anything different. Don't pick now to shut down over it, *please* - I need you to help me work this out.

"Ikuta Toma, Hasegawa Jun, Kazama Shunsuke, and the girl, Maki. Maki must've gotten your picture from your file, and found out where we were headed while she was working at the JE Fleet HQ. Everyone knew where we were going, it wouldn't have been much of a secret."

"What kind of security does that place have, anyway?" Kame said incredulously.

Jin suppressed a giggle produced half by amusement, half by exhaustion. "They keep the self-destruct codes for four major military bases lying around in a photo in President Tsubasa's office - what does that tell you?"

Kame looked thoughtful. "That tells me this whole thing is a set-up."

The Niagara Falls documentary ended, only to be replaced by an episode of '1407.6', in which Jack Bauer XXIV saved the day on Mercury. The resulting explosions were more than adequate to cover their conversation.

"I'm serious. The only way anyone could've known about the codes in the photograph would be if the information was deliberately leaked. What would you do if you knew you had an enemy, but you didn't know how to find them?"

"Lure them out," Jin said. "If I knew what they wanted, I'd find some way to bait a trap with it."

"Exactly." Kame's voice was grim. "And I'm the bait."

"Why would the president and Admiral Takki go to so much trouble just to set up a handful of people who want to kill you, though? Not that you're not important - to me, anyway - but don't you think-"

"Jin." Kame held up a hand to hush him. "Do you hear something?"

Jin looked around, wild-eyed, with one hand reaching for his blaster. Was that a scrabbling at the door? An intruder, trying to shortcircuit the keycard mechanism and break in to do who knew what to them?

Kame climbed noiselessly off the bed and tiptoed towards the door, drawing his blaster and holding it steady in front of him. He motioned for Jin to back him up. One step, then another. The rustling from the door grew louder.

Then there was a muffled thump, followed closely by Koki's cry of dismay. "I give up! Jin, what did you do to the doorbell?"

Jin refused to stop sulking till Koki had apologised to him twice. He hadn't broken the doorbell, hadn't been near the stupid thing, and Kame wouldn't let him use the keycard anyway on the grounds that he'd probably lose it.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Koki. "Aren't you supposed to be on guard duty?"

"I *am* on guard duty. For you two. Kazama regained consciousness a while ago, and I couldn't get hold of either of you to give you an update."

Kame remembered he'd switched his phone off. What about Jin's?

A hunt for Jin's cellphone concluded with the discovery of said device underneath a towel in the still sauna-like bathroom. It, too, was switched off.

Koki attempted to deliver a stern lecture to them both about how important it was that his captains be reachable at all times, but his efforts met with failure when Jin interrupted him mid-spiel with a spoonful of chocolate sauce. He aimed for Koki's mouth - unfortunately, the effects of the stunner resulted in Koki wearing, rather than eating, the proffered sauce.

At least it made Kame smile. "I never liked that shirt anyway," he said.

"But you always told me I looked good in it!" Koki protested.

A tiny, fierce spark of jealousy flared in Jin's chest and he smothered it before it could set fire to anything. Kame was nice to *everyone* - that didn't mean he was seeing someone else on the side.

"You said you had an update?" Jin's words came out more brusque than he'd intended.

"Kazama refused to talk. We tried threats, bribes, Ueda's smile...nothing worked until Taguchi got bored and challenged him to a card game."

"Poker?"

"Duel Monsters. Kazama was so traumatised after a couple of rounds he'd have sold out his own mother."

"We're not interested in his mother," Kame pointed out. "Did he have anything to say that might actually be helpful?"

Koki gave up dabbing at his ruined shirt with a tissue. "Have you guys ever heard of the 4Tops?"

Kame hadn't, which wasn't surprising given the lengths he'd gone to in order to keep himself apart from the outside world during his arrest period. He'd avoided looking at the viewscreen, ignored all the news bulletins, and even his knowledge of Fleet gossip was badly out-of-date. Why, everyone else had known months ago that the Pin's Lieutenant Kusano had been busted down to Ensign for unspecified alcohol-related incidents.

But Jin had done no such thing. He hadn't gone out of his way to keep himself informed, but he'd watched news broadcasts from time to time, and Yamapi could always be relied upon to pass on the latest scandals.

"They're a terrorist organisation, aren't they? They believe in the superiority of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars - the four 'tops' - and think Earth President Tsubasa should bring the outer planets under tighter control."

Koki nodded. "That's the group. They've been stirring up trouble for the last couple of years, but they only really started making a noise after the war. It shouldn't surprise you that Ikuta Toma, Horikita Maki, Hasegawa Jun and Kazama Shunsuke are all members."

"And that's very nice for them, I'm sure," Kame said, "but what does killing me have to do with their inner planet superiority complex?"

"Probably nothing," Koki admitted. "Kazama said this was a personal thing for Ikuta and Horikita, and he and Hasegawa were helping them out for old times' sake. They had a friend on Titan Colony, and through Horikita's job at JE Fleet HQ, they knew you were responsible for that particular mess. They'd been using stolen intelligence to plan their movements, it was no big deal for her to pull your file, get them a picture. You probably don't realise this, Kame, but your name and face have been kept out of the media. All of ours have."

"Because it doesn't look good for the military to hand over all this destructive, expensive technology to a load of ex-space pirates," Jin chimed in. "Even Yamapi's exposure is minimised. Probably why Hasegawa didn't recognise me when he stunned me - I was a skinny, short-haired blond the last time we saw each other, and I doubt he's seen any recent pictures."

Kame liked the mental image this conjured. "You'd have been such a cute blond."

"I was!"

Koki scratched his nose. "I don't know about that..." He relented when Jin batted him over the head, though. "All right, I'm sure you must've been a knockout. Anyway, Ikuta was looking for a way to get you off the ship and within reach, so when Horikita found out about the codes in the photograph, they decided to steal it, knowing full well the KAT-TUN would get the job. After that...the rest you know."

Jin recognised Kame's calculating expression. "You still think the info about the codes was leaked deliberately, don't you?"

"Yeah. If the 4Tops have been stealing secrets for years, somebody at HQ must have realised they'd been infiltrated by the group. Having the codes for the inner planet HQ self-destructs would've been irresistible to them - think of the demands they could've made, using those as leverage. Leak the info, wait for the photograph to go missing, then..." Kame stopped and frowned.

"Then?" Jin prompted.

"I don't know. What were the president and the admiral hoping to achieve? That by sending us after the thieves, we'd manage to catch them and bring the whole organisation down? I can understand the trust issues, but it still wouldn't make sense to send us - this isn't our job. The only way it *does* make sense is if they knew someone in the group wanted to get to me." Kame clutched his head and groaned. "I'm tying myself up in knots, here!"

"I don't think it's that kind of hotel." Jin yawned widely and sneaked a peek at the wall clock. Half past one in the morning. No wonder he was tired. They'd only arrived earlier that day, and in that time a lot had happened. In any case, nobody woke up refreshed from periods of stun-induced unconsciousness, and his eyes were protesting at still being open.

"There's nothing more we can do tonight," Kame decided. "My brain's asleep and the rest of me wants to follow. Jin's even worse off."

"I could do with some sleep myself," Koki admitted. "I'd better be getting back. Hasegawa's still out for the count but someone should keep an eye on Kazama." He rose from the bed, looked ruefully down at his ruined shirt, and started to head for the door. "I think you two should come with me."

Kame shook his head. "I think we're safe enough until we leave the hotel. Nobody's tried to get us here, and if Nakamaru was right, they don't even know where I'm staying. Besides," he touched his fingers lightly to Jin's shoulder, "the only way we're getting Captain Bakanishi off the bed is if we carry him."

"Akanishi," Jin mumbled, voice heavy with sleep.

Koki contemplated Jin's weight and the quantity of pudding he'd consumed, and decided it wasn't worth giving himself a hernia. "I'll be back first thing in the morning."

Once Koki had left, Kame managed to propel his semi-conscious partner towards the bathroom and get them both ready for bed. Jin did remarkably well given that his eyes were closed the entire time, only missing his mouth with the toothbrush once, though he remained oblivious to the fact that Kame was putting them to bed still fully-dressed.

"Kame," Jin murmured when they finally switched off the lights. "You really think we're safe in here?"

Kame's blaster was tucked underneath his pillow, within easy reach, and he lay on his side, facing away from Jin so if anyone came through the door, he'd have a clear shot. (If anyone came through the window, he'd have to rely on Jin, but since they were on the third floor he thought it was unlikely.)

There was no sense in worrying Jin - he was almost asleep already, and saying "actually, I think we stand a good chance of being disturbed before Koki ever gets to us" would only wake him up. Years of experience had taught Kame that he did a lot better on only a few hours sleep than Jin did.

"Yeah," Kame whispered back. "Go to sleep. It's all right."

Reassured, Jin obeyed, allowing his body to relax. He sank gratefully into the mattress, content to be oblivious until morning.

Kame lay awake in the dark and waited. There was one question he'd forgotten to ask Koki, though he doubted the other man could've answered it.

 _Were you followed from the Heartbreak Club?_

Because Kame had been very careful, on his way back from the restaurant, and it didn't sound like Hasegawa had been bothered enough with the man he'd stunned - Jin - to follow him to the hotel. If he had, he wouldn't have returned to the club in time to pull a gun on Nakamaru.

But Koki and the others had been hampered by two bound and unconscious men, and no matter how they'd explained it, they would've attracted attention. They probably hadn't been checking for tails, either. There was a very real possibility that they'd been followed to their hotel - and that Koki had been followed from there to Cupid's Gate.

Jin's breath caught in his sleep; Kame half-turned to check on him but he seemed easy enough. They'd woken each other up quite a few times with nightmares, images of deformed computers with thick black cables that reached out to grab their ankles and drag them into the human mulch below, but for now, Jin's sleep was free from interruption. Perhaps being stunned was good for something after all.

Kame let the rhythm of Jin's breathing lull him into a light doze: he knew it wouldn't take much to snap him out of it.

But when a stolen staff keycard swiped through the lock and the bedroom door slowly slid open, it was Jin who woke first.


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn't the first time Jin had woken up early on Valentine's Day. There had been the year he'd been woken by Ueda at four in the morning to say that their target was on his way out of the Sol System two days ahead of schedule and if they were ever going to steal his nice shiny cache of navicomps, it had to be now. Then there had been the year he'd woken up of his own accord, just before three, and spent the next few hours throwing up from a bad case of the Deimos strain of flu. Kame hadn't been around for that one.

By far the most pleasant Valentine's Days had been spent with Kame, and more often than not, those had involved sleeping in and getting up very late. It was one of the handful of days in the year when the others could be induced to bring them breakfast in bed - the height of laziness, really, since the cabins all had replicators and obtaining breakfast was usually as simple as pressing a few buttons.

On this particular Valentine's Day, with the first rays of sunshine beginning to peek through the gap in the curtains, 'early' was as late as six-thirty and Jin's five hours of sleep didn't feel like nearly enough. It was, however, more than sufficient for him to react in an instant to the first footfalls of their uninvited guest. Even as he blinked the sleep from his eyes, he drew his gun and sat up. Kame was in danger, and there was no way that Jin could sleep through that.

Horikita Maki didn't look like a terrorist - at least, not how Jin had always thought of them. She was slight, harmless-looking and faintly owlish of feature.

She was also wearing a Cupid's Gate maid uniform, and for a moment, Jin wondered if he'd just pulled a gun on some hapless staff member who was simply there to bring them an early breakfast. But even if he hadn't recognised her face, the stunner in her hand would've given her away.

Maki looked surprised to find Jin awake and armed, but she recovered quickly, firing a pair of shots as she threw herself back out the door. There was a slight crack and a cry of pain as she accidentally caught her nose on the frame: it didn't slow her down. The noise woke Kame - his "light doze" had turned into "heavy slumber" a good three hours ago - and he sat up with a start, the beam missing him by inches. The other skimmed Jin's curls but made no contact with his skin, ensuring he didn't get stunned twice in twenty-four hours but was doomed to have a bad hair day.

Kame leapt out of bed, diving for the door with his weapon in one hand and the room's keycard in the other. (He had no intention of accidentally locking himself out, and he didn't trust Jin to remember to bring it with.) He jammed his feet into his boots, commended himself for his foresight in going to bed attired in enough that he wouldn't be arrested for going out in public, and chased after the intruder.

Jin patted his hair gingerly, checking for damage, and scrambled to his feet. No way was Kame going anywhere without *him*. He seized his cellphone and made a frantic call to Koki while he slipped into a pair of running shoes.

"You're late!" he panted down the line. "Get over here before Kame gets himself killed!"

Koki's response was unrepeatable: Jin thought it sounded suitably urgent.

It wasn't hard to follow Kame. For one thing, neither he nor Maki had bothered to conceal their weapons, which meant Jin could just listen out for the sounds of screaming staff. He raced down the corridor, yelling at the occasional curious guest to get back in their room and stay there. Shrieks from the staircase told him to go down both flights - if he took the lift, he knew it would take forever.

It didn't matter if word got back to Eros City Security that there were lunatics running around with illegal weapons. All that mattered, as Jin saw it, was making sure that Horikita Maki didn't shoot Kame with her...stunner.

 _Stunner?_

Why a _stunner_ , of all things? Maki couldn't have carried Kame away by herself. Was she planning to knock him out and torture him? Kill him slowly? Call her friends to the hotel and have them do it?

 _Or had she never intended to hit him at all?_

With a sudden flash of insight, Jin increased his pace. Once Kame got out those front doors he'd be exposed, in the open...exactly where they wanted him.

They continued this strange chase, the three of them, through the foyer, past the fountain and all the cherubs, right down to the front door. Maki was temporarily slowed by a luggage trolley in her path, but Jin lost any ground he might have gained when he tripped over someone's abandoned bag and crashed heavily to the floor. He bit back a curse and sprinted after his partner.

He made it out the door just in time to be hauled into one of the small, pink cabs by Kame, who pointed out Maki's cab just disappearing into the distance, and yelled "Follow that car!" to the driver.

Their cabbie, who was built like a bouncer from a high-grav planet, was extraordinarily pleased. "I've been waiting all my life for someone to say that! Hold on, sirs, she won't get away!"

As Jin discovered when the driver gunned the engine, "hold on" was a useful piece of advice. He braced himself between the door, the seat and Kame, gripping the handle for dear life. "It's a trap," he gasped out.

Kame was breathing equally hard, and his knuckles were white where they clutched his blaster. "I figured that part out for myself."

"When?"

"About halfway down the second flight of stairs."

"Oh. Good." Jin held out his cellphone in one shaking hand. "I called Koki."

"Great, but he's not going to know where we are."

"Corner of Third and Shield, about to head down to Chapel Common," the cabbie helpfully supplied. "Is that lady you're chasing getting married today?"

Jin sent Koki a text with this information and said, "Not that I know of!"

"What makes you say that?" Kame asked.

Their driver gave a shrug of his beefy shoulders. "Chapel Common's where most of the weddings in the city take place, 'specially this time of year. Valentine's Day, they hold ceremonies from midnight to midnight, one entire day of non-stop weddings. If you squeeze in a quickie divorce, you can even get married there twice in one day."

The two captains shared a look of utter bewilderment.

"She can't be planning on roping me into a shotgun wedding, can she?" Kame said hesitantly. "What kind of revenge is that?"

"That would be revenge on *me*, and it's not going to happen." Jin gripped the door handle a little tighter as the cab careened wildly on two wheels to avoid a pony carriage. "I didn't steal you back from the Fahngarlians to watch you marry someone else."

Kame grinned at him. "I don't fancy gaining a terrorist group as my in-laws, thanks."

Both captains tucked their weapons away after one too many strange looks from the other cars on the road. Not that this made them any less conspicuous, but at least no one watching them would think they were holding up the driver.

Maki's cab stopped just outside Chapel Common, at a drop-off point ringed by trees. As she left the vehicle, a familiar face darted out of the shadows to join her.

"Toma," Jin muttered, and Kame peered out the window as their own cab ground to a halt.

"He doesn't look that dangerous."

"Neither does Aiba, until you let him loose in the lab."

Arashi's Aiba Masaki, known more for contributing to the 'Really Awesome' and 'Handsome' part of his organisation's name than the 'Smart' bit, was just as cute and fluffy as his habit of naming new spaceships after cats suggested. But let him anywhere near a laboratory, and his inner mad scientist took over. Every goldfish living in Arashi's space station, Horizon, quivered in its bowl when he approached.

Kame had to pay the fare with the credit card he kept stashed in the pocket of his jeans - under the name of 'Shinkame Kazuma', of course - and that slowed them down even more, waiting for the transaction to process. The cabbie didn't mind too much that they'd paid by card, not when he'd had the time of his life as part of a high-speed car chase, and he even offered to wait for them to return. Kame turned him down: if he'd eaten breakfast, he'd have lost it on the ride, and he could do without another trip like that.

Jin shaded his eyes and scanned the area. "I don't see them!"

Kame did the same but had better luck. The common was dominated by a cluster of large tents, each opening on a dais, and with a large, covered tube leading to the back. The tubes all emerged from the same giant building, the only permanent structure in the place, and all the wedding parties were headed in there. Even in that crowd, Maki's maid outfit stood out.

He pointed them out to Jin and the chase began anew, elbowing their way through the throng of couples, relatives, friends, well-wishers, gawkers and the occasional nay-sayer to reach the doors, where they were just in time to watch Toma and Maki disappear down a corridor marked 'm/m', accompanied by a pair of staff members and a nun wearing boxing gloves.

"Just one moment, sir and miss!" a cheerful voice rang out as its owner seized both Kame and Jin by the arm. "You'll need to register and pay a deposit. No refunds unless the ceremony ends before it starts!"

They looked at each other blankly. "Which one of us is a miss?" Jin wanted to know.

"You're the one with spangles on his shirt, he probably means you," Kame said, tugging his arm free to continue the pursuit.

"Register first!" The man, whose nametag read 'Ben', held out his hand. "Credit card will do."

Kame sighed and handed over his card to be swiped. Hopefully, the military would reimburse him.

"Mr. Kazuma Shinkame," the irritating little staff member called out. "And?" He looked at Jin.

Jin didn't want to take any chances. He didn't know how Maki had ended up going down the m/m corridor, but he and Kame had to follow. " _Mr._ Jinpachi Akasei."

"There's no need to shout," Ben said testily. "I can hear you perfectly well."

Given the noise level in the building, the veracity of this statement was questionable, but they didn't have time to argue. They let Ben lead them to the corridor, where they were left alone to make their own way towards the tent.

But not for long. A pair of enthusiastic dressers seized them before they'd taken ten steps, denounced their outfits with horror, and kitted them out in a pair of matching white tuxedos without so much as a by-your-leave.

"You do this to everyone who comes down here?" Kame asked, narrowly avoiding getting a hairbrush in the mouth.

"Everyone," came the response. "Your clothes will be waiting for you after the ceremony, when you have to give these back. You want your wedding photos to look good, don't you? We like to alternate the tuxedo colours, so the couple before you were both in black."

Jin took a guess. "Blond guy and a little guy in a maid's outfit?"

"That's the pair," the other dresser confirmed. "What a cute, boyish fellow! He was very shy, though - insisted on turning his back on us and dressing himself."

"Wish I'd known that was an option," Jin grumbled, but they didn't hear him. The only pair of hands other than his own that he wanted undressing and dressing him belonged to Kame: guarding the hyper-sensitive patch of skin at his collarbone was a near-impossible feat when the dressers were determined to get him to wear a bowtie. It was nothing short of a miracle that they'd both been able to keep their weapons concealed.

When they were finally allowed to go, they hurtled down the corridor as though they were being chased by JE Fleet Ambassador Nishikido Ryo, he of the psychotic stare and caustic tongue. They'd lost a lot of time.

"This is the worst Valentine's Day I've ever had," Kame complained as they ran. "Even counting the one where we all nearly got arrested."

Jin's laugh emerged as a wheeze, but the sentiment was intact. "You can't moan about that one, Kame - that was the day we stole our first ship together!"

Kame knocked his wrist against Jin's so their bangles sang out, and kept running.

The corridor gave way to an external door with a covered tube, and a woman ambushed them before they could leave.

"Vows," she barked at them. "Need a print copy, or saying your own?"

"Whichever's quickest," Kame answered.

The woman nodded. "Your own, then. Remember, keep it short. All ceremonies are a maximum of five minutes; the clerk will give you a nod to hurry it up if you're rambling too long. Civil ceremony only - if you want a religion of your choice, come back after midnight. Collect your certificate on the way out. Go!"

She hustled them through the door and went to tend to the next couple.

"People really think getting married like this is romantic?"

Kame was just as puzzled as his partner. "I think it's a novelty thing. Come on, I see daylight."

They emerged in a waiting area just behind the dais to watch a crowd of strangers applaud the marriage of 'Mizuki Ashiya' and 'Shuichi Nakatsu', a.k.a. Horikita Maki and Ikuta Toma. The ceremony ended with a whimper rather than a bang - Toma leaned in to kiss Maki but promptly started nosebleeding, and there was a general scramble as everyone searched for a tissue.

Both halves of the couple were handed a glass of wine: these were lined up in neat rows on a long table, two for each ceremony (weddings for three or more participants took place on a different dais). There was cake, but it was being consumed by the grumpy-looking clerk who was filling in all the paperwork.

The instant Maki and Toma accepted their certificate of marriage, they were ushered out the way and the next couple was announced.

"Kazuma Shinkame and Jinpachi Akasei!" the herald screamed out, reading from his datapad, and a pair of hands pushed Kame and Jin forwards.

There was no way for them to reach their quarry. Maki and Toma were waiting in the crowd, watching them. Maki looked tense: Toma looked...confused? Jin figured it must have been the announcement of their aliases that had thrown him off.

But he was only staring at Jin.

The governor of Eros City, who was conducting the ceremony at this particular dais himself - the others, he'd delegated to his underlings - had been handling the Valentine's Day rush at Chapel Common for the last six years, and he was as fed up with it as everyone else. Consequently, the ceremonies had reduced in length from thirty minutes to a mere five.

A lot of this was down to the governor's penchant for cramming as many words into one breath as he could possibly manage. "We, this crowd of complete and utter strangers, are gathered here today to watch another couple of tourists get hitched so they can tell their folks they got married in Eros City on Valentine's Day. How romantic."

He took his second breath, and added, "Vows. Start!"

Not unexpectedly, Jin's mind went blank. "Um...I..."

"I, Jinpachi Akasei," Kame whispered to him.

"I, Jinpachi Akasei...uh...being of sound mind and body-"

"You're not dictating a will!" Kame muttered, and there was gentle laughter from the crowd.

Jin opened his mouth to try again, but Kame shook his head. "Don't worry about it," he advised. "Let's just get this over with so we can get moving." He raised his voice so the crowd could hear him. "I, Kazuma Shinkame, take Jinpachi Akasei to be my lawfully wedded...uh..." He stopped, shrugged, and smiled at the crowd in lieu of a suitable noun. A woman in the front row screamed with joy, but was quickly hushed by her friends.

The governor looked at his watch. "Minute and a half - good enough for me. I now pronounce you married! Kiss each other, drink your wine, collect your certificate and get out of the way - I've got another hundred of these to do before lunch."

The clerk threw a half-hearted handful of confetti in their general direction and stuffed another piece of cake in his mouth.

Somehow, the sight just wasn't conducive to romance. The whole situation left Jin feeling confused and empty. He'd never thought about marrying Kame - about marrying *anyone*, come to that - and even if he had, this certainly wouldn't have been in his plans. Not this heartless, loveless sham before an audience of unknowns.

Well, unknowns and two terrorists.

"How did this happen?" he wondered aloud.

Kame placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and leaned in as if for a kiss. "I told you not to worry," he whispered. "It's not legally binding - we didn't marry each other under our real names. Now kiss me, drink your wine, and let's go after them."

That was more like it. Jin kept his eyes firmly fixed on the two fugitives as he brushed Kame's lips with his own, but it was unnerving to have Toma watching him still, puzzled, as though searching for the answer to some question he couldn't quite comprehend. Did Toma recognise him now? The skinny, gangly boy with the short blond hair had given way to a (slightly more) mature man who filled out his tuxedo where it counted, and wore his dark brown waves to his shoulders.

 _And if he recognised Jin, would it make any difference?_

Kame broke away first, a smile on his lips. "To be continued," he promised, and drew Jin across to the table to accept their cups of wine from the clerk. He handed them one apiece; they raised them in perfect synchronicity to their mouths, and...

"Stop!"

Jin jerked his wrist so suddenly in response to Toma's cry that half his glass spilled down the front of his fresh, white jacket.

"Stop?" the governor repeated. "We don't have time to stop. Next!"

"Don't drink from those glasses!" Toma yelled, and fought his way through the crowd to reach the wine table, a confused-looking Maki trailing along at his side.

The clerk threw down his pen in disgust. "Wimp!" he fumed. "You said it would be funny. But I put the stuff in like you said and I'm not giving the money back!"

Kame looked at his glass warily, and reached under his jacket to place his free hand on his blaster. "What stuff?"

"The pellets," the clerk sulked. "The red ones. He said they'd make you both real dizzy, start seeing things. You know, liven the wedding up a little."

An angry rumble started to work its way round the crowd. In some cases, this could be attributed to hunger as almost nobody bar the clerk had eaten breakfast yet, but mostly it was fury. Only the officials got to mess with the ceremony - never the couples.

"Toma," Jin said slowly, "what's really in our glasses? What are you trying to do?"

Up close now, Toma could hear Jin much clearer than he had during the latter's pathetic attempt at wedding vows, and his eyes widened at Jin's voice. "Akanishi Jin?" he asked. "Akanishi Jin who used to work for Kitagawa?"

Jin swallowed his next question, which was going to be something along the lines of "why can't you just leave Kame alone?", and said, "You really didn't recognise me?"

Toma shook his head. "I didn't...I didn't know..."

"What difference does it make?" Maki said. "Why did you stop them from drinking?"

"Why?" Kame echoed, his voice cold and brittle. "Change your mind about killing me?"

There was a collective gasp from everyone present, even those who knew what was going on.

There was a faint tremor in Toma's voice when he answered. "No. But I can't do it like this." He knocked the glasses from their hands.

Kame regarded the dark, reddish-brown stain on Jin's jacket, remembering the event that had bought him Toma's enmity in the first place. "Hair dye?"

"Yeah."

Kame seized Toma by the lapels, wishing he had enough height to be properly intimidating. As it was, he was going to have to rely on his anger. "Why bring Jin into it?"

"I didn't know," Toma reiterated. "I'd seen surveillance photos of the two of you together but I didn't know it was him, I swear!"

Maki gazed at Jin uncertainly. "He's a friend?"

"We haven't seen each other in, what, over ten years?" Toma said, and Jin nodded. "Not since Earth."

"I'm not here to reminisce, Toma." Jin glared at him. "If you guys did all this research on Kame, looking in his file, going to all the trouble of bothering to lure him here *almost* by himself, how the hell did you manage to avoid my name cropping up? The KAT-TUN has _two_ captains, you know!"

"We know that," Maki said earnestly. "The AT-TUN was under the sole command of Akanishi Jin for six months, and was renamed to KAT-TUN following Kamenashi Kazuya's recapture from the Fahngarlians and subsequent deprogramming."

"Exactly, and *I'm* Akanishi Jin!"

"Not according to your file, you're not." Toma's voice was slightly strangled; Kame still had his lapels in a knot. "Maki made copies of all the KAT-TUN personnel files for me, and not only did yours not have a picture but the kanji were different. I didn't think it was you - no details about your past. Never thought you'd join the military."

"Oh, and you'd happily have killed some other Akanishi just because he was here with Kame?" Jin spat.

Thunderclouds would've been brighter than Toma's expression. "Yeah, because all the gossip round JE Fleet HQ is about the two of you - how you went and "rescued" him from the Fahngarlians, and stopped him from being executed the way he deserves. The KAT-TUN captains, joined at the hip. He was supposed to bring you here for camouflage and lose you to that," he pointed at the shattered wine glasses on the ground, "before dying himself. No time for a honeymoon.

"But he was supposed to bring some nobody - not _you_!"

"I brought my _partner_ ," Kame said coldly.

"And his friends brought themselves!"

Everyone looked round to see Ueda and Taguchi, weapons drawn, standing on the edge of the dais. The shout had come from Ueda, and everybody made way when he approached the party by the wine table.

"Now what!" the governor roared. Everyone ignored him.

"The others are taking Kazama and Hasegawa to the station," Taguchi murmured in Jin's ear by way of explanation. "The Pin should have landed by now."

Recognition flickered in Maki's eyes. "I've seen your files," she said. "You're part of the KAT-TUN's command crew."

"How come they have pictures and I don't?" Jin mumbled.

He could understand having the wrong characters for his name on file, or even a missing picture - mistakes did happen, after all, and especially in the military. But for both of them to occur, well, that seemed deliberate. Could it have been Yamapi at work, trying to preserve a small measure of anonymity for him?

Yamapi had been the one to recruit him in the first place. While he hadn't always been good about understanding his best friend's need for space, he'd always respected it, giving him the breathing room he needed not to feel trapped. It made sense, after a fashion, that Pi had done this to help Jin keep his options open.

It was obvious Jin's mind was starting to wander, and Kame muttered his name to make him focus again. Jin looked up in time to see Kame's grip on Toma slacken, and Toma make a grab for Maki's tuxedo jacket. At first, Jin thought Toma had given up, had decided that if he was going to get shot down by the menacing Eros City Security personnel who'd surrounded the area by now, that he was going to get in a quick grope before he died.

Then he saw the photograph in Toma's hand.


	8. Chapter 8

There were very few people standing around the dais who knew the true significance of that photograph - nevertheless, everyone assumed it was something important. Something dangerous, even, given the way they began to retreat, taking shelter in the tent or crowding behind the uniformed Security people.

Kame made a lunge for the picture but Toma danced away, keeping it just out of his reach, and Maki stood fierce between them.

"Stay back!" Toma warned. "You know what this is used for!"

"Yes, and we also know you can't use it here!" Ueda yelled back. "All outgoing transmissions are blocked! Scan it all you like but the codes won't get through!"

"That doesn't mean I can't destroy it!" Toma pulled out a lighter. "The president would lose his remote control over the USN bases on the inner planets...and if he can't keep the rest of the Sol System under control, maybe it's time someone else took over!"

He flicked his fingers and a tongue of bright orange flame licked dangerously near the corner of the picture, which was missing its frame. Taguchi took a step forward, but Toma shook his head.

"Don't move! You can have this back when we all get out of here. The KAT-TUN's docked at the spaceport, right?"

Kame nodded. "It is, but-"

"And you're coming with us, Kamenashi." Toma didn't give him time to argue. "The rest of you stay here."

Jin's heart skipped a beat. Like hell was Toma taking Kame with him. "You can't leave," he pointed out. "Not till Sunday. What are you going to do, Toma? Barricade yourself in the station until the weekend?"

Maki finally spoke up. "We won't have to. Not with one of these talking for us." She pulled a nerve disruptor from beneath her jacket. The weapon was banned everywhere except Ross 128, and for good reason. There was no less dignified a way to die. "Return Hasegawa and Kazama to us. I've got the ship schematics - there's no way anyone will be able to catch up to us once we're on board, and your trainees will fly wherever we tell them to with Kamenashi's life at stake."

"That's not much of a threat when you're trying to kill me anyway."

Toma smirked. "But they don't know that, do they? Or there would be more than six of you in the city."

Kame fell silent. The trainees didn't know, and if one of their officers was in danger, they'd do anything to save him. Including flying a small subsection of a terrorist organisation halfway across the galaxy.

Jin held up his hands to show they were empty, then sidestepped in front of Kame. "You can't. Take me instead. Please! If you really want to make him suffer, kidnapping me will have more effect than just killing him!"

He hoped that, by splitting them up, Kame would be safe. He didn't think Toma would kill him - though he wouldn't put it past Maki to try - and once he was back on board, well, anything could happen. Yamapi would be bound to notice there was something wrong when the KAT-TUN took off without warning, particularly since Koki and Nakamaru were, according to Taguchi, filling him in right now.

A bony elbow caught him in the side as Kame pushed past him, snarling under his breath for Jin to shut up and stop talking himself into dangerous situations.

Toma's composure had been momentarily shaken by Jin's suggestion, but with Kame coming to the fore, he was on more solid ground. "Nice of you to make the offer, Jin, but I can't do that. Kamenashi has to pay for what he did, and fifteen months stuck on board ship with his friends is no kind of punishment for wiping out hundreds of thousands of people! I'm not going to hurt you, but I can't let him live!"

"Killing him isn't going to bring your friends back - or anyone else!" Jin implored. "Kill Kame and you might as well kill me!"

Kame's head whipped round. "Jin!"

"If you're missing, I can find you," Jin whispered. "Even if it takes me the rest of my life. But if you're dead, all I can do is follow you. I can't bring you back."

"Stop trying to sound so cool - you're embarrassing me..." For all that Jin's gesture had flustered him, Kame still found it sweet. Horribly, horribly mistimed, but sweet. "You can't pay my debts for me, Jin." He pressed a cold kiss to Jin's cheek, and turned to face Toma.

"All I can do is tell you how sorry I am," he began, "but I know that's nowhere near enough to make up for what I've done."

"You've got that right," Toma said.

"You don't understand!" Jin did his best to intervene. "He was out of his mind at the time!"

The look Kame gave him would have withered the Tree of Life itself. "You're not helping by trying to convince everyone I was insane, thanks."

"But you-"

Kame pulled his shirt open, wincing as a couple of the buttons popped off and were lost forever. As a tactic for persuading people not to kill him, exposing his bare chest had a hundred percent success rate - but he'd only tried it once, and that had been on Jin. He'd offered to let Jin kill him in retribution, and Jin had turned away.

Toma didn't. "You want to take your punishment now, that's fine." He traded the photograph and lighter to Maki in return for the nerve disruptor, and pointed it at Kame. "I'm sorry, Jin, but I have to do this."

If you'd asked Kame fifteen months ago if he deserved to die, he'd have said yes in a heartbeat. If you'd asked him fifteen minutes ago, he'd probably still have said yes. He hadn't even begun to deal with his part in the war, had hidden away in the safety of the KAT-TUN, with the hull between him and the rest of the universe, and he didn't have to look at what he'd done.

Oh, intellectually he knew he could never make up for his actions. He could spend the rest of his life apologising to the friends and relatives of the people whose deaths he'd contributed to in some way, and even if he did the same for his next twenty lifetimes, it wouldn't be enough.

But now he was out in the universe again, and there were consequences. Real people, people who didn't have to put up with him no matter what, who had every right to want him dead - if only they knew he was guilty. And Toma did. And Maki, and their friends. No one else outside the military, but it didn't matter to Kame. Numbers didn't matter, because even the smallest number felt too big. There was no reason Kame could think of that he deserved to live. His only argument was that killing him wouldn't fix anything...although it might ease the pain. Exactly whose pain, he wasn't sure.

So Kame's life mattered less. Sacrifice one to appease the many, he understood that concept. And up until now, he'd have agreed. Sure, he'd have made a token protest, and if he hadn't had his friends and crew to protect, he might have given up, let himself be turned into fodder for the computing monstrosity.

But there was one single event that had changed his mind. Jin had offered himself in Kame's place, and more-or-less stated outright that Kame's death would mean his own.

If Kame wasn't worthy of existence, had no possibility of redemption...would anyone ever have said that?

Besides, he'd already broken Jin's heart once. He didn't think he'd be forgiven a second time.

Forgiveness was quite clearly the furthest thing from Toma's mind as he took aim with the nerve disruptor at Kame's torso. Though his hand wavered, his expression remained cool, dispassionate. It was to be an execution, then.

Kame closed his eyes, held his breath, and waited.

Three things happened simultaneously. Jin tackled Kame to the ground, covering him with his own body to shield him from a shot that was never fired; Ueda shot the disruptor out of Toma's hand...and Commodore Yamashita Tomohisa appeared in the middle of the dais.

Having had the wind knocked out of him by his partner, Kame couldn't manage anything more than a gasping "What the...?"

Jin drew back into a crouch so Kame could get up, and stared in amazement at his best friend. "Pi, am I hallucinating or did you just teleport into Eros City?"

"Got a presidential order to stop the jamming long enough for the Pin to get a lock on the tracking device in Kame's leg and teleport me here," Yamapi responded. "Good thing he didn't have it removed yet, or I'd never have found you guys. Nakamaru couldn't tell me exactly where you'd gone."

Jin looked from Yamapi to Toma. "Did they tell you about...?"

Yamapi nodded slowly, struggling to hide his uneasiness. "Toma."

For his part, Toma was looking equally nervous. Ueda's bullet, a hard projectile of compressed oxygen, had knocked the nerve disruptor away with such force that the motion had left his hand sore. Taguchi had caught the weapon on the fly and taken the opportunity to make it disappear altogether, pocketing it discreetly to cannibalise for parts at a later date.

The lighter lay forgotten on the ground where Maki had dropped it - the commodore's sudden appearance had been as much a surprise to her as to everyone else, though she'd managed to hang onto the photograph.

Even the governor successfully read the tension in the air. A new player had joined the game, and no one knew whose move it was next.

Yamapi removed a pair of the Pin's teleport bracelets from his pocket: he held one out to Toma, the other to Maki. "We're going to teleport back to my flagship, where the other two are waiting for you, and you're all going to tell me everything about the 4Tops. _Everything_."

Toma started to respond, but lapsed into silence when Yamapi shook his head. "Toma, I don't know what I want to say to you. I just know I don't want to say it here."

"You all right, Pi?" Jin crept close enough to speak to his best friend without being overheard. "You look like hell."

"They're not supposed to keep me out of the loop," Yamapi muttered back. "They *promised* they wouldn't keep secrets from me, and then they make me send you guys out here to get yourselves killed for nothing, trusting you'd be okay if you were all together."

Though no names were mentioned, it was easy enough for Jin to figure out who'd gotten Yamapi so upset. President Imai Tsubasa and Admiral Takizawa Hideaki. It must have been, Jin thought, one hell of a debriefing.

"What do you mean, for nothing?"

Jin hadn't heard Kame sneak up behind him, and the sudden irate voice in his ear made him jump.

"The photograph," Yamapi said sadly. "No codes."

He said this loud enough for Maki and Toma to hear, and Maki turned the photograph over in her hand, squinting at it in fierce concentration as though she could verify this for herself. "We were set up?" she asked.

The commodore nodded. "All you've got is a nice picture of my CO and his partner at the beach. I don't know where they keep the real codes."

A moment of stunned silence, and the photograph joined the lighter on the ground.

As a pair of burly Eros City Security men cuffed Toma and Maki and jammed the teleport bracelets none-too-gently on their wrists, the crowd began to disperse and Kame surprised himself by volunteering to Yamapi the information that Toma hadn't actually fired the nerve disruptor.

"I'm not sure he was going to, either," he added. "If that counts for anything."

Yamapi considered this a moment. "It counts with me," he said.

\-----

At Eros City Spaceport, Docking Bay 94, the command crew of the KAT-TUN were delighted to discover that in their incredibly brief absence, the trainees had a) not blown up the ship and b) managed to repair the jets in the hot tub.

"It's not as nice as the one in our hotel but at least it doesn't make me paranoid!" Jin declared, and Kame was forced to agree.

They were going to be stuck in port another couple of days anyway while Yamapi interrogated his prisoners and tried to figure out what to do with them. It was an uncomfortable time for the poor commodore, caught between his superiors and old friends turned renegade. Kame wasn't interested in pursuing charges against them, and despite his unfortunate experience outside the Heartbreak Club, neither was Jin. Ueda had successfully suppressed his ire at being shot by Kazama upon discovery of the latter's connection to Yamapi, though he did make a point of saying he never wanted to share an orbit again.

In the grand scheme of things, the plan to wreak vengeance on Kamenashi Kazuya was far less important than the overall terrorist activities of the 4Tops. With no clear way to infiltrate the group, Takki and Tsubasa had taken the only option available to them: use Kame as a stalking horse. They'd known Ikuta Toma was part of the organisation - known of his past working for Kitagawa, of his helpless fury as he'd watched the Titan Colony die from afar - and knew that with nothing to lose, he'd never give up his leaders.

So they'd set him up. Having concluded that the 4Tops must have had a spy inside JE Fleet HQ, they'd allowed the knowledge to leak about Kame's role as the tactical consultant for the Fahngarlians, and how much they valued his expertise for covert missions, assuming it would draw Toma out and give him something to focus on. They'd also spread rumours about the self-destruct codes - a tempting treat for any organisation seeking control of the inner planets. The combination had been enough for Toma and his like-minded friends to act on their own, risk exposing themselves for the sake of revenge - and incidentally do their leaders a favour at the same time.

"I don't care," Kame said when the admiral filled him in during a three-way vid-screen conference between the KAT-TUN, the Pin, and JE Fleet HQ. "I don't want to know what you know, or why you did it, or how sorry you are. I just want you to leave me the hell alone."

He switched off the screen, silencing both other parties in the conversation, and stormed off to his cabin.

Everyone else on the bridge turned to look at Jin.

"You have to go after him," Ueda said. "Or we're all going to mutiny."

There were nods of agreement from all sides. Jin crumbled under the weight of their combined stares and trudged after his partner.

Kame hadn't locked himself in, but he didn't make any move to welcome Jin either. He was lying on the bed, arms folded beneath his head, surrounded by the remains of his luggage. (Yamapi had forgotten to bring any teleport bracelets from the KAT-TUN with him, so the crew had had to return to their hotels, grab their bags, and leave Eros City the normal way. Luckily, the presidential permission allowed them to leave early.)

Jin perched gingerly on the edge of the bed and cast a wary glance down at Kame, as though the latter were about to sprout claws and take a swipe down his back.

"How do you deal with it?"

"What?"

"How do you deal with it?" Kame repeated. "You know what I did - and you're one of the few people who know why. How do you live with it?"

Jin shrugged. "I don't think about it. We didn't have much to do with the war until the end, and I didn't know you were involved till then. It's like...I separate things out so I only have to deal with the parts that are relevant to me.

"And it's more important for you to be here with me - and our friends - than for you to be rotting in some jail somewhere. It's hard to find redemption if no one will let you do anything, right?"

Kame sat up, reached for Jin's hand and squeezed his fingers to near-breaking point. "Right." He sighed. "We're on leave again now. Properly. One month."

"Do you want to go back to Earth?" Jin hesitated to ask.

The younger of the two captains shook his head. "Everyone else wants to go: they've been looking forward to it. So have you."

"Yeah, but there's nothing to stop us going away by ourselves, is there?" True, Jin _had_ been anticipating a return to Earth with great pleasure, enjoying the novelty of travelling around with Kame and knowing he didn't have to keep looking over his shoulder. But that could wait until Kame was ready to go back. "We can use one of our shuttles and let Ueda take the ship down to Tokyo Central Spaceport for the month. Or we could get them to drop us off somewhere and we'll just take commercial flights wherever we want to go."

"I don't know _where_ I want to go, Jin." Kame tugged him down till they were both lying flat on the bed. It was hard to believe that only fourteen hours ago, they'd been in the same position in Room 369 of the Cupid's Gate. "It wasn't so bad in Eros City, because we were on a mission and it's not the kind of place where anyone cares who you are or what you've done."

"It's not like people on Earth know what you've done," Jin pointed out. "Not outside the military - and probably members of the 4Tops, who will be getting arrested soon enough anyway."

"It doesn't make any difference whether they know or not. _I_ know. I don't think I'm ready to stare civilians in the face and carry on a normal, everyday conversation with them when in the back of my mind I'll be thinking about how big their coffin would have been."

"This is a really depressing conversation to be having on Valentine's Day, you know?" Jin tried to think of a more cheerful topic, but the only thing that sprang to mind was a conversation he'd been having a week ago with Nakamaru on the rising price of hyperdrive fuel, and he didn't think that was likely to be much help. "Let's just go somewhere far away, then. Leave the Sol System, go to planets the Fahngarlians never even thought about. I hear Gliese 581 d is nice this time of year."

"Long way to go for a vacation."

"So?" Jin wriggled closer to Kame, pressing their hips together. "If we disappear for a while, who's going to care? Our COs owe you one for using you as bait, and I don't really feel like reporting in at JE Fleet HQ right now."

"They've spent a lot of money on this ship," Kame warned. "They're not going to let us just walk away with it."

"Yeah," Jin agreed, "they've spent money. So much that there's nothing else in the entire United Solar Navy that can catch us, never mind the JE Fleet. Besides...none of us are angels."

Kame rolled sideways to catch his partner's eye, and winked. "I have a plan. Yamapi obviously needs cheering up, so we descend on the Pin with a couple of crates of replicated beer and a lot of cake, get him so drunk he'll agree to anything, and get him to sign off on a six-month furlough. We can be gone before he recovers from the hangover."

"Oh, that'll really brighten his day..."

"Tomorrow," Kame decided. "Tonight, I need cheering up too. I still think this is the worst Valentine's Day I've ever had. Waking up to stunner fire, a car chase that would've made a roller coaster look tame, a fake wedding with a poisonous ending...oh, and one noble but really stupid attempt by a certain Captain Bakanishi to throw himself in the line of fire."

Jin turned away, so hurt he forgot to correct the nickname. "You thought it was stupid?"

Kame caught him round the waist and hugged him tightly. "Stupidly romantic, then. But please don't offer to give yourself up for me in the future, because if you'd been killed, Toma might as well have taken us both out with the same shot."

A slow, satisfied grin began to work its way across Jin's face. "Who needs chocolates for Valentine's Day when you have self-sacrifice?"

"Well, it would've been nice to get chocolates again," Kame said wistfully. "The trainees gave us so many last year. I must've received about thirty."

Jin pretended to count tens of chocolates on his fingers. "I think I probably got about forty."

Kame quickly amended his figure, sure that he'd forgotten a few. "Come to think of it, I forgot about all the ones from the guys in Engineering. The real figure must've been about fifty-six."

"Seventy."

"Eighty-three."

"Ninety-two."

"One hundred and six."

"One hundred and eleven."

Kame burst out laughing. "Jin, do we even have that many trainees on board?"

"Uh...maybe? Most of them are very small, they don't take up much space. Especially that Chinen kid."

Kame's mirth increased in volume, resounding throughout the cabin. "You were that tiny once too," he pointed out.

Jin smirked. "Bet I've always been taller than you, though."

"Doesn't matter when we're lying down."

There wasn't a lot Jin could say to that. For one thing, it was true, and for another he couldn't say anything at all when one of Kame's hands left his waist to nestle itself in his curls, the other began to trail under his shirt, up along his ribcage, and Kame's mouth greeted his with a gentle kiss. He barely noticed as Kame's weight shifted from the mattress as he lowered himself slowly over his partner, knees on either side of Jin's legs, heat rising between them as the bubbles had the night before.

Jin moaned before he could catch himself, lips parting under Kame's, the sound stolen by the warmth of Kame's mouth.

"Even if it was a fake wedding, we can still have a honeymoon," Kame gasped out between kisses. "And I've got the certificate in case we ever need to go undercover as a married couple!"

"Oh no," Jin vowed, "that is the last time I agree to any mission that involves us playing detective for the military!"

His stomach churned angrily and he grimaced, made a grab for Kame's wrists to still him.

"What is it?" Worry coloured Kame's voice. "Still feeling bad from the stun? It should've worn off completely by now."

"It's not that." Jin couldn't keep from blushing. "I'm hungry. We ate so well yesterday, and then we didn't have anything today because we missed breakfast and then there was the wedding and-"

"I get your point," Kame assured him, and reached for the replicator remote. "We shouldn't have started talking about chocolate. Late supper for two?"

Jin's stomach growled so loudly that both men stared at it in alarm. "Better make it four," he said. "I think I'm about to fade away from hunger."

Kame resigned himself to spending another frustrating night with his partner. After eating so much that late, Jin would probably drift off to sleep, leaving Kame to clear away the crumbs and make sure neither of them was likely to roll over and end up with rice in their hair or anything. It was a comfortably familiar routine.

Comfortable, because they were safe on their own ship, shielded from the rest of the universe by a thick hull and some good friends, and whatever happened to them there, they were together.

Kame wouldn't have it any other way.


End file.
